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IN FAMI NE LAND 



OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIENCES IN INDIA 
DURING THE GREAT DROUGHT OF 1899-1900 



BY 



Rev. J. E. SCOTT, Ph.D., S.T.D. 

CHAIRAIAN M. E. MISSION RELIEF COMMITTEE 
RAJPUTANA 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEV^ YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER &- BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1904 



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U8RARV nf CONGRESS 
Two Cepies Received 

FEB 15 1904 

Copyright Entry 
^a --^ . ' £ > p f .- 
CLASS ^ X;io. No. 

7 t ^ t 2- 
' COPY S 



Copyright, 1904, by J. E. Scott. 

Alt rights reserved. 

Published Februan,', 1904. 



2)eOfcateO 

TO 

LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON 

VICEROY AND GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA 

UNDER WHOSE ENERGETIC AND BENEVOLENT ADMINISTRATION 

THE HORRORS OF THE GREAT FAMINE WERE 

MITIGATED AND RELIEVED 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface , . ix 

I. Great Famines in India i 

II. The Causes of Famine lo 

III. Prevention of Famine 23 

IV. The Great Famine 28 

V. The Famine Codes 42 

VI. Famine Relief 54 

VII. Rajputana 67 

VIII. Trekking 77 

IX. The Bhils 84 

X. Through Famine Land 95 

XI. Cholera 103 

XII. The Place of Death 113 

XIII. Receiving and Giving 123 

XIV. SujAT Road 131 

XV. BiKANiR 141 

XVI. Ajmir-Mairwara 150 

XVII. Tilaunia 165 

XVIII. Phalera . 176 

XIX. Forms of Relief 185 

XX. Conclusion 196 

Index - 199 

Glossary 206 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



MORTALITY 

MAP OF INDIA AND CEYLON. SHADED PART SHOWS 

FAMINE AREA 

DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD IN FAMINE TIME . . . 

WAITING FOR FOOD 

THE DEAD PIT DAILY COMPANY 

POOR-HOUSE AT AHMEDABAD 

RELIEF WORKS BREAKING STONE 

CONVALESCENTS IN THE POOR-HOUSE 

THE CORN SHIP " QUITO " IN BOMBAY .... 
HEARING AND ATTENDING TO PETITIONS OF THE 

POOR 

STARVING VILLAGERS, RAJPUTANA 

FAMINE-STRICKEN 

ON THE WAY 

BHIL BOWMEN, RAJPUTANA 

AT LAST 

THE TREE UNDER WHICH THE REV. C. S. THOMPSON, 

C.M.S., DIED 

OUR GUESTS 

THE HORRORS OF FAMINE. PARTLY EATEN BY 

JACKALS WHILE ALIVE 

STARVED 

CREMATION OP FAMINE BODIES, AHMEDABAD . . 

vii 



Frontispiece 



Facing p. 



I 

4 
i6 

36 
44 
SO 
58 
62 

64 
68 
74 
78 
84 
86 

88 
96 

100 
104 
106 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

SORTING THE PATIENTS — GODHRA Facing p. Io8 ' 

THE STAFF THAT STUCK — CHRISTIAN NURSES IN 

FRONT " 1 10'' 

THE VALLEY AND SHADOW OF DEATH. .... " II4'' 

GRAIN STORED AT GODHRA READY FOR VILLAGES . " 126 

"little KOKO" " 128 

AGED BY HUNGER " I38' 

FAMINE CHILDREN EVERY-DAY SPECIMENS ... " 146 ' 

RESCUED CHILDREN, AJMIR " 152 

GROUP OF ORPHANS, AJMIR AFTER TWO MONTHS. " 156 

GROUP OP ORPHANS, AJMIR AFTER THREE MONTHS " 160 

GROUP OF ORPHANS, AJMIR AFTER FOUR MONTHS " 162 

THE KITCHEN AT TILAUNIA " 1 66 

" CHRISTIAN HERALD " CORN READY FOR DISTRI- 
BUTION '-' 170 

WAITING TO PURCHASE CHEAP GRAIN ..... " 186 ' 
FRUIT BEARING BISHOP WARNE BAPTIZING OR- 
PHANS AT BARODA " 192 ' 

ORPHAN BOYS BAPTIZED BY BISHOP WARNE AT 

NADIAD " 196 " 



PREFACE 

This book is not the outgrowth of the dreamy medi- 
tations of a recluse. It is not the result of a morbid 
imagination. It is not a book of fiction. It is not 
written to gloat over unprecedented human miseries, 
nor from a desire to be sensational, nor to hold up 
horrors to a benevolent and sympathetic public. 

It is rather written from the stand-point of the most 
tangible of all facts, the social and physical life of a 
people, to record some of the natural, economic, and 
political conditions under which they exist, and to pre- 
serve certain details of recent events of universal human 
interest while fresh in the memory and while contem- 
porary corroborating testimony is readily available. 

It is written, too, by one who has spent the most of 
his life in India, and who, in the late famine, took a 
humble part in trying to save life and relieve distress. 
Others did more, but none could have had a deeper 
appreciation of existing need nor a greater desire to 
relieve it. It is essential to a clear understanding of 
the calamity to know something of the history of famines 
in India, of the conditions under which they arise, of the 
causes which produce them, and of the efforts put forth 
by the government and by private benevolence to save 
and relieve the stricken people. Hence, these subjects 
have been included. 

It is said that " one half the world does not know how 
the other half lives"; but recent events have shown 



PREFACE 

that one half the world has been interested in keeping 
many millions of the other half alive. As chairman of 
one Famine Relief Committee and member of several 
others I was jointly responsible for the distribution of 
several hundreds of thousands of dollars, mostly contrib- 
uted by the people of America, These kind donors 
doubtless have a desire, as they certainly have a right, 
to know what became of their contributions. I have, 
therefore, endeavored to give an account of famine re- 
lief in at least part of the afflicted provinces, that they 
may know, from one present, something of what became 
of their money, grain, clothing, and medicines so gener- 
ously contributed. The famine, thank God! has gone, 
but thousands of waifs, mostly children under twelve 
years of age, are left as a legacy, to be fed, clothed, and 
trained. Many are aiding in this noble work. It may 
be seen from these pages from what a death, and at what 
personal risks, these waifs have been rescued. Many 
of them will grow into useful men and women. In 
this great famine millions have perished in spite of all 
that the most active measures and the most tender care 
could do. It is impossible that famine be ever entirely 
banished from India, but its horrors may be greatly 
mitigated and the distress of the people relieved. 

In the preparation of this volume I am indebted to 
many for their valuable assistance ; in fact, I have sought 
to give the facts, scenes, and incidents connected with 
the famine in the language of eye-witnesses, actively 
engaged in famine relief, and who wrote down at the 
time their vivid impressions. Numerous extracts from 
current literature, from letters written to friends and to 
the press, and from official documents, reports, and 
statistics have been quoted. I am especially indebted 
to the pages of the Christian Herald, of New York, 
and the Guardian and the Indian Witness, of India, for 



PREFACE 

current incidents. It has been the aim to give credit 
for these in the body of the work. The photographs 
were taken, as a rule, by famine rehef officers and other 
helpers, as. they went about their work among the peo- 
ple. Some few of them, perhaps, have been published 
before, but all help to illustrate and interpret the fam- 
ine. I have sought to give the latest available statis- 
tics and the most reliable data from official sources. 
The full results of the late census were not yet published, 
and I had to make use of advanced sheets of the late 
Famine Commission's Report at the time this book was 
concluded. However, it is hoped that I have stated 
nothing which may be vitiated or disproved by their 
fuller facts and conclusions. For all imperfections the 
author can only ask the indulgence of the reader. 

J. E. Scott. 

AjMERE, N. W, P., India, 
August 12, 1903 



IN FAMINE LAND 



GREAT FAMINES IN INDIA 

" Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconse- 
quential incidents; in India they are devastating cataclysms. 
In the one case they annihilate hundreds, in the other mill- 
ions." — More Tramps Abroad. 

From time immemorial there have been great, wide- 
spread, devastating famines in India. The historic 
faculty being deficient in this slow, plodding people, they 
have failed to record their sufferings, so that we have 
no complete record of these awful periodic calamities. 
But there are hints. On good authority we learn that 
five hundred years before Christ, in the reign of Jai 
Chand, there were great pestilence and famine in India. 
Whole provinces were depopulated in the reign of 
Musaood I., in 1022, a.d. Delhi and the Punjab were 
visited by famine in 1291, 1342, 1344-45, 1412-13, 1738, 
1781-83, 1785, 1824-25, 1860-61, 1868-69, 1897, and 
1900. In the Madras Presidency there were famines 
in 1811, 1824, 1833, 1854, 1877, 1888, and 1890. 

Great famines ravaged the Northwest Provinces in 
1770, 1783, 1803, 1819, 1837, 1861, and 1877. In 1344- 
45 the famine was almost universal throughout India, 
and so severe that the Emperor Muhammad was not able 

X 



IN FAMINE LAND 

to get supplies for his own family. There was a great 
famine in India m 1491. In 152 1 and in 1540-43 there 
were famines in Smd. One of the great famines of 
history was in 163 1 . It prevailed over almost the whole 
of Asia, and was especially severe in Hindustan. " It 
began," says the historian, "from a failure of the 
periodical rains of 1629, and was raised to a frightful 
pitch by a recurrence of the same misfortune in 1630. 
Thousands of people emigrated, and many perished be- 
fore they reached more favored provinces; vast num- 
bers died at home ; whole districts were depopulated, and 
some had not recovered at the end of forty years. The 
famine was accompanied by a total want of forage and 
by the death of all the cattle, and the miseries of the 
people were completed by a pestilence such as is usually 
the consequence of the other calamities." 

Famine often waited upon war. "After the con- 
quest of Lodi," says Mr. Mills, ^ "the war in the Deccan 
was little else than a series of ravages. The princes were 
able to make little resistance. A dreadful famine, from 
several years of excessive drought, which prevailed 
throughout India and a great part of Asia, added its 
horrid evils to the calamities which overwhelmed the 
inhabitants of the Deccan." There was another great 
famine during the reign of Aurangzeb. " The third year 
of his reign" (1665), says the author quoted above, ^ 
"was visited with a great famine, a calamity which 
ravages India with more dreadful severity than almost 
any other part of the globe. It was occasioned by the 
recurrence of an extraordinary drought, which in India 
almost suspends vegetation, and throughout the prin- 
cipal parts of the country leaves both men and cattle 
destitute of food." 

* History of India, vol. ii., p. 263. " Ibid., p. 278. 

2 



IN FAMINE LAND 

In 1770 Bengal was devastated by the most awful 
famine which, according to Colonel Baird Smith, had 
ever visited India/ It is stated that one-third of all 
Bengal, one of the most fruitful presidencies in India, 
lay "waste and silent" for twenty years. A brief 
account of it is given below: 

"The crops of December, 1768, and August, 1769, 
were both scanty, and prices became very high; and 
throughout the month of October, 1769, hardly a drop 
of rain fell. The usual refreshing showers of January 
to May also failed in 1770, in which year, until late in 
May, scarcely any rain fell. The famine was felt in all 
the northern part of Bengal as early as November, 
1769, but by the 4th of January, 1770, the daily deaths 
from starvation in Patna were up to fifty; and before 
the end of May, one hundred and fifty. The tanks were 
dried up, and the springs had ceased to reach the surface, 
and before the end of April, 1770, famine had spread 
desolation. In Murshidabad, at length, the dead were 
left uninterred ; dogs, jackals, and vultures were the sole 
scavengers. Three millions of people were supposed 
to have perished. It is also said that within the first 
nine months of 1770, one-third of the entire population 
of lower Bengal perished for want of food." 

In writing of the famine of 1770, Macaulay states: 

"In the summer of 1770 the rains failed; the earth 
was parched up, the tanks were empty ; the rivers shrank 
within their beds, and a famine, such as is known only 
in countries where every household depends for support 
on its own little patch of cultivation, filled the whole 

* Vide Romesh Dutt's Famines in India, p. i, 
3 



IN FAMINE LAND 

valley of the Ganges with misery and death. Tender 
and delicate women, whose veils had never been lifted 
before the public gaze, came forth from the inner cham- 
bers in which Eastern jealousy had kept watch over 
their beauty, threw themselves on the earth before the 
passer-by, and with loud wailings implored a handful of 
rice for their children. The Hoogly every day rolled 
down thousands of corpses close to the porticos and 
gardens of the English conquerors. The very streets 
of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead. 
The lean and feeble survivors had not energy enough 
to carry the bodies of their kindred to the funeral pile 
or the holy river, or even to scare away the jackals and 
vultures that fed on human remains in the face of day." 

Still another account is given in England's Work for 
India, thus: 

"All through the hot season the people went on 
dying. The husbandmen sold their cattle; they sold 
their implements of agriculture; they devoured their 
seed grain; they sold their sons and daughters, till at 
length no buyer of children could be found; they ate 
the leaves of the trees and the grass of the field, and in 
June it was reported that the living were feeding on the 
dead. Two years after the dearth, Warren Hastings 
made a journey through Bengal, and he states the loss 
to have been at least one-third of the inhabitants, or, 
probably, about ten millions of people. Nineteen years 
later Lord Cornwallis reported that one-third of Bengal 
was a jungle inhabited only by wild beasts." 

There was also a terrible famine in Bengal in 1866, 
when, it is estimated, one million people perished. 
Rajputana, always a dry and sandy coimtry, without 

4 



IN FAMINE LAND 

rivers or canals, has frequently suffered from terrible 
famines. In 1 812-13 Marwar was ravaged by locusts, 
and the annual rains failed, and immense numbers 
perished on the field, or migrated, only to meet a like 
fate. In 1833 not a drop of rain fell in Ajmir. Again 
in 1847-48 there was a famine. In 1868-70 there was 
another great famine, which was especially severe in 
Rajputana. Of this it is said: "Rajputana, with its 
area of desert and its scanty water supply, was most 
affected. It is usual in time of scarcity for the popula- 
tion of the more arid district to migrate to the more fer- 
tile states, but on this occasion all were alike parched 
by the drought, which was the most calamitous on 
record. Thousands of the famine-stricken poured into 
British territory in search of food, greatly aggravating 
the burden already felt there. The famine of 1868, in 
Rajputana, in severity surpassed that of 181 3, which 
was the most calamitous of which they had record. It 
was more severely felt in Marwar, the northern portion 
of which was deserted." There was no railway, and 
there were very few roads in Rajputana in those days, 
and consequently no grain could be brought in from 
outside. Marwar famine relief at that time was not 
what it is now. It is estimated that a million people 
perished, or migrated, from Rajputana alone, during 
that year of awful suffering. The recent famines, follow- 
ing each other in 1890-92, 1896-97, and 1 899-1900, still 
leave upon the saddened land the marks of their devas- 
tation. Concerning the famine in Ajmir-Merwara the 
Report of the Indian Famine Commission, 1898, states: 

"In 1890-92 severe distress was experienced in the 
British districts of Ajmir-Merwara, covering an area 
of 2710 square miles, and containing a population of 
^43,000. The adjoining native states were similarly 

S 



IN FAMINE LAND 

affected in a greater or less degree. In the first period, 
dating from the deficient monsoon rains of 1890, and 
the consequent failure of the rain crops of 1890 and the 
rahi of 1891, distress was chiefly confined to the Todgarh 
subdivision of Merwara, and to the southern portion of 
Ajmir, and nothing more than moderate scarcity pre- 
vailed. But with a still more pronounced failure of the 
monsoon of 1891, and of the kharif and rabi crops of 
1891-92, distress became severe and general, and was not 
alleviated until the bounteous autumn rains of 1892 
restored agriculture to its normal course. The average 
annual rainfall of the tract is small, being a little under 
twenty-one inches. In 1890 only twelve inches fell 
in Ajmir, and thirteen and one-half inches in Marwar. 
In 1 891 the Ajmir rainfall was only eight and one-half 
inches, and that of Marwar ten and one-half inches. In 
neither year did a sufficiently heavy fall of rain occur 
at any date to fill the irrigation tanks, on which much of 
the cultivation depends. The estimates of the four 
harvests dependent on the rains of these two years place 
the yield in the two districts at about one-quarter of 
the average. Grass, fodder, and water also failed. Many 
of the cattle were driven off to more favored districts in 
Meywar, and many died. The losses on this account fell 
even heavier on the agriculturists than the loss of crops, 
and when the monsoon rains of 1 892 came, great difficulty 
was experienced in placing the normal area under the 
plough. In its intensity and duration the drought of 
1890-92 was as great as any of the great droughts which 
have visited this tract of country in the past, among 
which the drought of 1812-13, the drought of 1847-48, 
and the drought of 1868-70, are the most memorable." 

In the famine of 1896-97 the Bikanir, Bharatpur, and 
Dholpur states in Rajputana were the most affected, but 



IN FAMINE LAND 

all the states experienced short harvests, and in many- 
places, there being no relief works, there was much 
distress. The famine of 1 899-1 900 in Rajputana, as else- 
v/here, was the worst in the mem->ry of man. It is 
stated that there lives in the Jodhpur State an ascetic, 
one hundred and eight years of age, who remembers the 
great famine of 181 2, and is of the opinion that the 
destruction of cattle in the recent famine far exceeded 
anything he has ever experienced. In the states west 
of the Arr.vali mountains, Jodhpur and Bikanir, the 
famine was e::pecially severe, but it may be said that all 
of Rajasthan was smitten by this awful drought and the 
people were suffering for want of water, crops, and fodder. 

In India nearly every year finds some place of greater 
or less extent in distress. It may not amount t actual 
famine, but for some reasons there have been scant 
harvests. Sometimes locusts, at others hail, and oc- 
casionally too much rain, destroy the crops. 

The following table, compiled by the Famine Com- 
mission, shows the frequency of drought, the area and 
population affected, and the maximum relieved on any 
one day, from 1884 to 1896. 



Province affected 



Punjab 

Lower Bengal 

Madras 

Central Provinces 

Behar. 

Orissa (Tributary States). . . . 

Madras (Ganjam) 

Kumaun and Garhwal 

Kamaun Division and Dehra 

Dun 

Madras 

Bombay (Deccan) 

Bengal and Behar 

Upper Burma 

Ajmir-Merwara 



884 

884-8S 

8S4-85 

886-87 

88S-89 

880 

888-89 

890 



)I-92 
)I-92 
)i-g2 






970 

3,000 



1,000 
2,500 



22,700 
9,484 
5,710 

10,000 
2,710 



100,000 
1,100,000 



1,467,000 

3,880,000 

800,000 

543,000 



rt o u 
S OJ u 

S 3 o 



4,620 
20,800 



42,000 

900 

21,000 



92,583 
S,7oo 
77,800 
30,000 
33.913 



£ S 5 
!5 S 2 



4,000 

2,700 

104,000 



6,961 
2,580 



IN FAMINE LAND 

Concerning these famines the Report of the Indian 
Famine Commission, 1898, states : 

"Of the famines here described, the gravest were the 
Ganjam famine of 1889 and the Madras famine of 1890- 
92. On these occasions the loss of crops appears to 
have been almost as great as that which occurred in 
the same tracts in the late famine. In the scarcity 
which visited Behar in 1891-92, the crop failure in a 
portion of North Behar approached, in its complete- 
ness, the crop failures of 1873-74 and of 1896-97. 
In none of these cases was relief required on anything 
like the scale found necessary in 1896-97. The ex- 
planation must be sought in the unprecedented rise in 
prices which distinguished the late famine, and in the 
general paralysis of industry which so wide-spread a 
calamity occasioned. The experiences of the interven- 
ing years between 1880 and 1896 point to the conclusion 
that scarcities occurring over limited areas while the rest 
of the Indian continent is prosperous can be success- 
fully dealt with by a very moderate expenditure of 
money and without disturbing the ordinary administra- 
tion." 

During the past century there have been two bad 
seasons to every seven good ones in India. The great 
famines have occurred at intervals of about twelve 
years. There have been seven great famines in the 
nineteenth century, affecting at least two hundred mill- 
ions of people. The mean annual rainfall for the whole 
of India is forty-one inches, and during the past twenty- 
five years it has ten times fallen below that. During 
the reign of Queen Victoria, Empress of India, there 
were at least eight famines in India; concerning the 
niortality attending all but the last, by far the most; 



IN FAMINE LAND 

destructive of all, Mr. Robert Scott, of the Christian, 
London, has gathered from official sources that "in the 
famine of 1837-38, 8,000,000 people were affected, and 
800,000 died. In 1860-61, 13,000,000 were affected, and 
upward of 1,000,000 perished. In 1863 a quarter of 
the population died in some of the districts. The total 
deaths were enormous ; nearly the whole of the laboring 
population were swept away. In 1866 nearly 1,000,000 
perished. In 1868-69 1,250,000 persons, according to 
the government estimate, died of hunger. In 1876-78 
the mortality exceeded 5,250,000. In 1896-97, in June, 
of the latter year, there were no fewer than 4,500,000 
persons in receipt of relief, and Lord George Hamilton 
stated at the Mansion House that at that date upward 
of ten million pounds sterling, had been disbursed in 
relief; but at a later date, when the sum total was 
arrived at, it was stated in the columns of the Times to 
amount to the almost incredible sum of ninety million 
pounds sterling." 

It is difficult to give in exact terms the extent and 
ravages of the late famine, but not less than 400,000 
miles of territory and 60,000,000 of people were affected, 
and the sufferings and mortality were beyond the power 
of the human tongue to describe. 

Says Mr. Dutt:^ "Within the last forty years, within 
the memory of the present writer, there have been ten 
famines in India, and at a moderate computation the 
loss of lives from starvation and from diseases brought 
on by these famines may be estimated at fifteen mill- 
ions within these forty years. It is a melancholy phe- 
nomenon, which is not presented in the present day by 
any other country on earth enjoying a civilized admin- 
istration." 

^JF amines in India, p. 16. 



II 

THE CAUSES OF FAMINE 

"Who hath gathered the wind in His fists? Who hath bound 
the waters in His garment?" — Proverbs, xxx., 4. 

The primary cause of famine in India is the failure 
of the monsoon. It is entirely beyond the control of 
man. The monsoon is the periodical wind blowing off 
the sea and carrying with it over the great plain the 
water-jfilled clouds, which drop their fruitful showers as 
they fly. When this wind fails, or is deflected, at the 
proper season, the rains fail, the crops fail; and when 
the crops fail, untold misery and death and ruin are the 
result. 

The monsoon, then, is India's salvation. The word 
is of Malay origin, and means " seasons," and is thus ap- 
plied because, in tropical countries, the regular motion 
of the trade-winds is arrested by these periodical gales, 
which blow from one direction for one half of the year 
and from the opposite during the other half, the south- 
west monsoon prevailing north of the equator from 
April to October, and the southeast monsoon south of 
the equator during the same period, while from Octo- 
ber to April the northwest monsoon blows south of the 
equator and the northeast monsoon north of the equa- 
tor, the only modification being that the time of the 
occurrence of the southwest and northwest monsoons 
is affected by the distance from the equator. If we 
would seek for the cause of the monsoons we must in- 

J9 



IN FAMINE LAND 

quire of the sun during his apparent annual progress 
from one tropic to the other. He heats up India from 
April to June, until the rarefied atmosphere arises in 
haste and rushes out to sea, while the moisture-laden 
air rushes in to take its place, and so "watereth the 
earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may- 
give seed to the sower and bread to the eater." I can- 
not make it clearer than by quoting from Brocklesby's 
Meteorology (pp. 80, 81.): 

"These stated rains originate in the change of the 
periodical winds, by which the union of vast volumes 
of air, differing in temperature, is rapidly effected. 
Early in the month of June the soil of the peninsula 
becomes intensely heated by the vertical rays of the 
sun, and powerful currents of rarefied air then ascend 
from the earth. To supply the deficiency thus created, 
the warm and humid atmosphere of the equatorial seas 
flows in, constituting the southwest monsoon ; this wind 
now mingles with the cool, dry air, which the northeast 
monsoon, for the six previous months, has been con- 
stantly bringing to the peninsula from the polar and 
temperate climes, and thus produces a combination 
favorable to the precipitation of rain upon a most ex- 
tensive scale. 

"The southwest monsoon does not, however, bring 
rain to the whole of India. Parallel to the western 
coast runs a chain of high mountains, termed the ghauts ; 
here the monsoon is arrested in its course, and most 
of the moisture with which it is charged is precipitated 
ere it arrives at the central table-land of Mysore. On 
the eastern, or Coromandal coast, its influence is not felt, 
and the seasons are here reversed. From March till 
June the winds are hot and moist, blowing mostly from 
the south, over the Bay of Bengal ; from June to October 

If 



IN FAMINE LAND 

the heat is very great, but about the middle of the latter 
month the cool, northeast monsoon commences, bring- 
ing the periodical rains, which terminate by the middle 
of December, the monsoon continuing to blow until the 
beginning of March." 

As we have seen, the famines in India, as a rule, have 
been the result of a failure of the rains following the 
failure of the monsoon, which is regulated by the sun. 
All this is beyond men's control. Here we enter the 
sphere of Divine Providence. But famine is such a 
cruel thing and affects so many millions of God's helpless 
creatures, many of them innocent, that it is difficult to 
reconcile it with the fatherhood of God. 

As one has put it : " The recurrence of famine is a 
severe test of one's belief in the doctrine of Divine 
Providence, as it is generally presented. The problem 
is not easy of solution. Epidemics of disease are doubt- 
less the result of violation of sanitary law. War is the 
outcome of human imperfection and limitation. And 
so we may go through the list of physical evils which 
afflict humanity, and account for them without disturb- 
ing the belief that the administration of the affairs of 
the world and the direction of the forces of nature are 
in the hands of Almighty God. But we cannot affirm 
that unpropitious seasons are the result of man's mis- 
conduct; we can only say that the disastrous results of 
bad seasons are aggravated by the indolence or neglect 
or stupidity or shiftlessness of men. Perhaps it is true, 
as some have affirmed, that Providence has supplied 
India with abundance of all things required for the 
needs of all her inhabitants, and if men would use the 
intelligence God has given them in husbanding and 
utilizing this abundance India would have a famine in- 
surance which would suffice for even such famines as 



IN FAMINE LAND 

that which now prevails. There is no doubt that, in the 
year 1899, the aggregate rainfall of India was quite 
sufficient for the whole land. The trouble is, it was not 
well distributed. Chirapunji had about six hundred 
and fifty inches, the largest amount ever recorded, 
while on the opposite side of the peninsula the de- 
ficiency of rain was just as remarkable. Perhaps it is 
God's plan that men should assist in distributing what 
He gives, be it water or food, or any other good thing 
He has provided for men. If we take this view of the 
case, the difficulty in regard to Providential control dis- 
appears. Yet we, in the impatience of our own limita- 
tions, cannot help asking why some of the floods of rain 
which devastated Assam could not have been sent to 
the other side of the peninsula. Did the machinery 
break down? Or is the disaster a necessary condition 
of the limitations which inhere in all things finite." 

The machinery did not break down. God is back of 
His laws. Famine is the result of law. Law is eternal ; 
and He who is working out eternal principles, who 
permitted sin, and death, and pestilence, and plague, 
and storm, and flood to enter and remain in the world, 
will in the end bring to the greatest number the greatest 
good by permitting a famine to occur. Man needs such 
examples of the Power above, of his own helplessness, 
and such calamities arouse the benevolence and charity 
and unselfishness, and call out the ingenuity and pru- 
dence and skill and effort of man in endeavors to mitigate 
and overcome the evil. A theory has been adduced 
that famines are caused by a deficiency of sun-spots, or 
that, at least, the recurring famines always fall upon 
years either immediately succeeding, or in close proxim- 
ity to, the time of minimum sun-spots. This may be 
fanciful, but Dr. W. W. Hunter pointed out, about the 
year 1877, from data gathered in the Madras Presidency, 

13 



IN FAMINE LAND 

that the years 1811, 1824, 1833, 1854, 1866, and 1877 
were famine years, and that the minimum sun-spot 
occurred in 1810, 1823, 1832, 1856, 1867, and 1878. 
From the fact that from the year 1813 to 1876 the 
average rainfall in Madras was 48.51 inches, and that 
during the famine years the fall was far below this, and 
from the association of the rainfall and the sun-spots 
between these years, it may be concluded that "the. 
minimum period in the cycle of sun-spots has been a 
period of regularly recurring and strongly marked 
drought in south India." 

But famine cannot all be blamed upon the monsoon 
or upon the sun. There are conditions in India which 
are favorable to famine. India is a poor country. It is 
inhabited by a race of agriculturists, who are dependent 
upon their crops, which in good years are barely" suf- 
ficient to feed them. It has been estimated by Sir 
Arthur Colton that two acres of rice -land will feed 
seven people for a year. A family of five can live on 
less than six pounds of grain per diem. The fact is, 
very many live on very much less than a pound a day. 
In India the farmers — i.e., the masses of the people — 
have no surplus. They live from hand to mouth, with 
but very little in their hand. So that the conclusion has 
been reached that "food at three times its ordinary price, 
at a season when some months must elapse without re- 
lief, means famine in the greatest majority of cases, 
while in some cases famine comes long before that rate 
is reached. When the rate rises to four times the 
ordinary standard, it is probably accompanied by 
famine of a very severe description." Millions of 
people are living just on the border-land of famine. 
Sir William Hunter has estimated their number at 
forty millions, and, indeed, it has been confidently 

14 



IN FAMINE LAND 

stated that "at least over a hundred milHons of 
the population of India scarcely ever know, from 
year's end to year's end, what it is to have a satis- 
fying meal, and that it is the rule, and not the ex- 
ception, for them to retire to rest, night after night, 
hungry and faint for want of sufficient and suitable 
food." Commissioner Booth Tucker, who was a magis- 
trate in India for a number of years, after dividing the 
lower stratum of society into twenty-five millions of 
poverty-stricken, laboring classes, earning less than five 
rupees a month for the support of their families, and 
twenty-five millions destitute and unemployed poor, 
who earn nothing at all, and who are dependent for 
their livelihood on the charity of others, says of them:* 

"Besides the 25,000,000 who constitute the actual 
destitute and criminal population, we estimate that, at 
a very low computation, there are 25,000,000 who are 
on the border-land, who are scarcely ever in a position 
to properly obtain for themselves and for their families 
the barest necessities of existence. I do not say that 
they are wholly submerged, but they pass a sort of 
amphibious existence, being part of the time under 
water and part of the time on land, some part of their 
life being spent in the most abject poverty, and some 
part of it in absolute starvation — positively for the 
time submerged, and liable at any moment to be last- 
ingly engulfed. These are the classes whose income 
never rises above five rupees ($1.66) a month, while 
more frequently it is under four rupees," 

Bishop J. M. Thobum, who has spent more than 
forty years travelling over all parts of India, says:^ 

* Darkest India, p. 43. * India and Malaysia, p. 35. 

IS 



IN FAMINE LAND 

"In most parts of the country, at least outside the 
large cities and towns, a man will work faithfully for 
wages not exceeding five or six cents a day, and on this 
pitiful sum he probably has to support a wife and from 
two to six children. To his credit, let it be said, he 
always does it without grumbling. The people of India, 
indeed, are among the most patient creatures to be 
found in the world. Dr. Hunter, who is recognized as 
one of the best-informed authorities on Indian sub- 
jects, affirms that there are more than forty millions of 
people in India who habitually live on insufficient food. 
I should be inclined to put the number much higher; 
but, leaving it at forty millions, it is a startling and, 
indeed, awful statement to make, and one which makes 
us think seriously about the present condition of our 
race. So far as my own observation has extended in 
India, I have been led to believe that not more than 
half of the people ever eat to repletion, but that, on 
the other hand, they provide two meals each day as 
well as they are able, and content themselves with such 
food as they can procure, whether it be absolutely 
sufficient or not. 

"They spend very little in clothing, and literally live 
from hand to mouth the whole year round, so that their 
life is one long struggle against absolute want." 

One of the saddest things in India at any time is the 
poverty and helplessness of the cultivating classes. 
They never seem to be able to save anything, nor do 
they seem to make much effort to do so. Many cen- 
turies of oppression and wrong have taken hope and 
courage out of them. Frugality and thrift are to them 
almost unknown. They seem to have no power to plan 
for the future. If nature is propitious they get a living, 
which is the end at which they aim, and if the monsoon 

i6 



IN FAMINE LAND 

fails they inevitably fail with it. They live on less 
than three cents a day, and if they can get together two 
cents in the worst of times they will never go on relief 
works. They are quiet, uncomplaining, local, and domes- 
tic in their habits, and as long as they have a home 
they will never leave it. It is only when the thatch 
roof is fed to the cattle, or burned for fuel, and the 
cattle and their owners in extremities, that they gather 
up what little is left and go in search of food. And even 
then they do not always get it. 

Many of them die on the road. They travel in the 
wrong direction, and never come to a land of plenty. 
If they arrive at relief works, they are too weak to 
work. There is, therefore, no bulwark against a bad 
year. The farmer has no "staying power." A rainless 
summer gives him " cleanness of teeth." 

The general conclusion as to the condition of the 
people of India, arrived at by the Famine Commission 
of 1898,^ was that while of late years the condition of 
the land-holding and cultivating classes and of skilled 
artisans, except weavers, has improved, yet "beyond 
these classes there always has existed, and there still 
does exist, a lower section of the community living a 
hand-to-mouth existence, with a low standard of com- 
fort, and abnormally sensitive to the effects of inferior 
harvests and calamities of season. This section is very 
large, and includes the great class of day-laborers and 
the least skilled of the artisans. So far as we have been 
able to form a general opinion upon a difficult question, 
from the evidence we have heard and the statistics 
placed before us, the wages of these people have not 
risen in the last twenty years in due proportion to the 
rise in prices of their necessaries of life. The experience 

^Famine Report, p. 363. 
17 



IN FAMINE LAND 

of the recent famine fails to suggest that this section 
of the community has shown any larger command of 
resources or any increased power of resistance. Far 
from contracting, it seems to be gradually widening, 
particularly in the more congested districts. Its sensi- 
tiveness or liability to succumb, is possibly becoming 
more accentuated, instead of diminishing, as larger and 
more powerful forces supervene and make their effects 
felt where formerly the result was determined by purely 
local conditions. 

We may take this opportunity of remarking that the 
evidence given before us by many witnesses proved that 
in times of scarcity and famine in India, the rise in price 
of food is not accompanied by a rise in the wages of 
labor; on the contrary, owing to competition for the 
little employment available, when agricultural employ- 
ment falls off the rate of wages offered and accepted is 
frequently below the ordinary or customary rate. Such 
wages, in times of famine prices, are not subsistence 
wages for a laborer with dependants to support. This 
explains and justifies the practice which able-bodied 
laborers often adopt of taking what private employment 
they can get at their homes or elsewhere, and sending 
their wives and children to the relief works. The fact 
also indicates that a practical difficulty in the way of the 
working of a principle was that remuneration on relief 
works should be always fixed so as not to attract labor 
for which there is existing employment elsewhere. But 
if the wage for such employment is not a living wage 
for the ordinary laborer with a family, the wage the 
family can earn on relief works must necessarily be 
higher. 

The fact is, the average cultivator is in debt. He can- 
not lay by enough in the good years to tide him over 
the bad ones and pay his landlord (the government) 

i8 



IN FAMINE LAND 

his revenue. Hence he must borrow. And the money- 
lender is at hand. He lets the cultivator have money, 
at an exorbitant interest, with which to pay the revenue, 
and takes a mortgage on the land as security, with this 
lamentable result, that the ryot becomes poorer and 
poorer and is inextricably entangled in the net of the 
avaricious and unmerciful biuiya or money-lender. In 
famine times he goes to the wall. Here, then, we find 
a serious condition of things. Government demands, 
in most places, a fixed revenue from the cultivators. 
The cultivators, being unable to pay, borrow of the 
money-lenders, and find themselves hopelessly involved. 
Under these conditions it does not require a very un- 
friendly monsoon or a great deficiency of sun-spots to 
ruin them and enrich the Eastern confidence man — the 
bunya. 

The late Dr. Carey, founder of the Agricultural Society 
of Bengal, says:^ 

"An independent husbandman, free from debt and 
looking forward with delight to the whole of his little 
crop as his own, is almost a phenomenon in the country. 
Most of them, through the wretched system which now 
prevails among them, are in debt perhaps for the seed 
they sow, are supplied with food by their creditors dur- 
ing all the labors of the field, and look forward to the 
end of the harvest for the payment of a debt, to which 
at least forty per cent, is added, and which, through the 
way in which it is exacted, is often increased to fifty 
per cent. 

"We have known many instances in which the crops 
of two succeeding years have been pledged before a 
single clod of earth has been turned up, and this not in 

^ Debt and the Right Use of Money, p. 4. 
19 



IN FAMINE LAND 

the case of a solitary farmer, but of the greater part of 
the district." 

Even the Indian government has felt the power of 
the money-lender, for at one time it was officially stated 
that "His Lordship in Council entertains no doubt of 
the fact that the laboring classes of the native community 
suffer enormous injustice from, want of protection by 
law from the extortionate practices of money-lenders. 
He believes that our civil courts have become hateful 
to the mass of our Indian subjects from being made the 
instruments of the almost incredible rapacity of usurious 
capitalists. Nothing can be more calculated to give 
rise to wide-spread discontent and disaffection to the 
British government than the practical working of the 
present law\" 

As one has said:^ " Shylock flourishes in India as 
perhaps in no other country under the sun. His name 
is legion. He is ubiquitous. He has the usual abnor- 
mal appetite of his fraternity for rupees. But, strange 
to say, he fattens upon poverty and grows rich upon 
the destitute. Whereas in other regions he usually 
concentrates his attention upon the rich and well-to-do 
classes, here he especially marks out for his prey those 
who, if not absolutely destitute, live upon the bor- 
der-land of that desolate desert, and make up by their 
numbers for what they may lack in quality. He gives 
loans for the smallest amount, from a rupee and up- 
ward, charging at the rate of half an anna per month 
interest for each rupee, which amount to nearly thirty - 
eight per cent, per annum. 

" As for payment, he is willing to wait. Every three 

^ Darkest India, p. 24. 
20 



IN FAMINE LAND 

years a fresh bond is drawn tip, including principal 
and interest. Finally, when the amount has been 
sufficiently run up, whatever land, house, buffalo, or 
other petty possessions belong to the debtor are sold, 
usually far below their real value. I remember one 
case which came before me when I was in government 
service, where the facts were practically undisputed, in 
which a cultivator was sued for 900 rupees, principal 
and interest, the original debt being only ten rupees' 
worth of grain, borrowed a few years previously. Ul- 
timately it was compromised for about 100 rupees. This 
is by no means an exceptional case." 

Of course, the Indian ryot is often improvident and 
extravagant. He is not very prudent and far-seeing. 
He lives his simple life, getting what little enjoyment 
he has out of present environments. Social customs 
and religion require him to spend a good deal of money 
on the marriage of his daughter and at the funeral of 
his father. Says an Indian writer:^ 

"We heard the other day of the sum of 15,000 rupees 
having been set aside by the parents to be expended 
on the marriage festival of their son. Even the poorer 
classes in India are given to such reckless expenditure, 
and we know of several families who have been ruined 
forever by a hopeless contraction of debts from those 
veritable Shy locks, the sow cars, or money-lenders. 

"And yet, strange to say, these are the very people 
who are so fond of money, and do even the most menial 
service to add something to their purse." 

Funerals are almost as expensive. In some places 

* Debt and the Right Use of Money, p. 6. 
21 



IN FAMINE LAND 

the average cost of the funeral ceremony for an old 
member of a Hindu family is 500 rupees. Men have 
been known to give their land and then sell themselves 
to the money-lender in order to get money for marriage 
expenses. In many places the Hindus murdered their 
infant daughters in order to avoid these ruinous charges. 
Besides this, there are countless other religious and social 
ceremonies which must be observed. The Hi»du attends 
religious festivals and travels many miles to visit shrines. 
He gives to his priests and makes offerings to his gods. 
As a rule, nature is kind to him. It has provided him 
with a wonderful soil, which ordinarily produces, with a 
minimum of toil, two and three crops a year. But he 
is a slovenly and unscientific cultivator, and his land is 
deteriorating. In the light of all these facts it is plain 
that the people of India are in a state of unpreparedness 
for famine. It is plain, too, that not only nature, but 
man also, has much to do with bringing about famines 
in India. Nature initiates, and man is in no condition 
to withstand or endure their ravages. In summarizing 
the human part, among the things which make for 
famine in India are lack of thrift, a fixed and som^etimes 
excessive land revenue, the extortion of bunyas and 
money-lenders, over-population in some places, and 
failure to develop the industrial resources of the country. 



Ill 

PREVENTION OF FAMINE 

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, 
Which we ascribe to Heaven." — Shakespeare. 

It is easy to theorize as to the best way of preventing 
the recurrence of famines. While it is doubtful if they 
can ever be entirely prevented, for certainly the natural 
lav/s will continue in operation and the meteorological 
changes recur, yet there are many things which can be 
done to lessen their severity and to ameliorate the 
condition of the people. They can be taught more 
thrifty and frugal habits; excessive population can be 
avoided by encouraging emigration to other less populat- 
ed parts ; ^ revenue can be remitted, reduced, or suspended ; 
a legal interest can be fixed, thus preventing exorbitant 
usury; alienation of landed property may be, except 
under certain conditions, disallowed; industries can be 
encouraged ; and, above all, railways and canals may be 
greatly extended. The usefulness of the former has 
been proved in famine times by the rapid transporta- 
tion of food into the affected parts. The Famine Com- 
mission of 1898 thus pointed out the utility of railways '? 

" It is clear that the very marked tendency to equaliza- 
tion of prices throughout India is due to the great ex- 

* The average density of population is 184 to the square mile, the 
same as France, but in some parts there are 934 to the square mile. 
"^Indian Famine Commission, 1898, p. 359. 

23 



IN FAMINE LAND 

tension of railways and to the opening up of large tracts 
of country formerly provided with inadequate means of 
communication. On almost all the railways in India 
the sanctioned rates for grain freight vary from one- 
third to one-tenth pie per maund per mile, though on 
two lines the permissible maximum is .44 pie per maiind 
per mile. Within these limits, the actual charges are 
at the discretion of the railway administration, and 
generally vary according to distance. We have ascer- 
tained that during the famine special rates for grain 
freight were sanctioned on all lines, the percentage of 
reduction varying considerbly on different lines and on 
different lengths of the same line. The maximum per- 
centage of reduction appears to have been sixty per 
cent. From the information before us as to the rates 
actually charged during the late famine, we infer that 
in future famines the rate for the carriage of grain by 
rail may be estimated at about one and one-quarter 
annas per maund per one hundred miles for distances 
not exceeding five hundred miles, at one anna per 
maimd for distances exceeding one thousand miles, and 
at about one and one-eighth annas for distances be- 
tween five hundred and one thousand miles. In 
1880, according to the Famine Commissioners, the 
charge for transport between the most distant parts 
of India connected by rail, was about one anna per seer ; 
and grain could be bought costing twenty-four seers per 
rupee in northern India, and sold, with fair profit, in 
southern India at eight seers the rupee. At the pres- 
ent time, grain would be carried one thousand miles 
for a little over ten annas per maund of forty seers; 
and wheat, selling in the Punjab at twelve seers 
the rupee, could, if on the line of rail, be placed 
one thousand miles off and sold at ten seers the ru- 
pee/; 

24 



IN FAMINE LAND 

We know the usefulness of canals/ The Greek Megas- 
thenes, 300 years b.c, found about Patna "the whole 
country under irrigation." The great Akbar, in 1568, 
commanded his son to build a canal, so that " this jungle, 
in which subsistence is obtained with thirst, be con- 
verted into a place of comfort free from evil " ; and the 
canal exists to-day, as a monument to the great em- 
peror's statesmanship and engineering skill. The total 
amount expended by the British government on canals 
for irrigation and navigation in India up to the year 
1897 was ;^37,ooo,ooo. About fifty years ago the late 
General Sir Arthur Cotton and his coadjutors executed 
magnificent canals in connection with the great rivers 
of the Madras Presidency — the Godavari, the Kistna, 
and the Cauvery, which give an ever-increasing revenue 
as well as prosperity to the people. Concerning the 
magnificent Ganges Canal it has been stated:^ 

"In 1837-38 there was a terrible famine in north 
India. The peasants, for years afterwards, employed 
it as an era by which to calculate their ages. This led 
government to commence, in 1842, the Ganges Canal, 
which in its earliest form was opened in 1854. Ini866a 
continuation of the main line to Allahabad, known as the 
Lower Ganges Canal, was recommended. The Upper 
Canal takes away about half the water of the Ganges, 
near Hardwar, and distributes over the upper part of the 
country between the two rivers. It rejoins the Ganges 
at Cawnpore. The Lower Ganges Canal is a southward 
extension of the Ganges Canal, with which it has direct 
communication. The head-works draw their supply 
from the river near Raj ghat, and the canal waters the 

^ There are now about twenty-five thousand miles of railways and 
fifteen thousand miles of navigable canals in India. 
^ Tour Round India, p. 34. 

25 



IN FAMINE LAND 

lower part of the Doab. The two canals have looo 
miles of main channels and 4400 miles of distributaries. 
The annual value of the crops irrigated by them is 
estimated at four crores of rupees. When Ihe country 
beyond their range has been like a desert, the portions 
watered have borne luxuriant crops. They are the 
greatest irrigation works in the world."* 

It is doubtful, however, whether any one enterprise 
will avail completely, but all can be conjointly used 
to the bettering of the condition of the vast population. 
To show how opinions differ on the subject of prevention 
of famine, it may be stated that only recently it has 
been pointed out that:^ 

" Desirable as it is that irrigation should be extended 
wherever practicable and remunerative, such extension 
would never solve the famine problem. The real remedy 
lies in the introduction of foreign capital, the develop- 
ment of the material resources of the country, and the 
removal of the surplus population from the overcrowded 
occupation of agriculture. The viceroy has shown a 
practical sympathy with new industries in India, but 
conditions will never be wholly and completely favorable 
as long as any attempt is made to control business 
affairs, at any stage, on official lines." 

The author of a recent book on Famines and Land 
Assessment in India^ seeks to show that "the resource- 
less condition and the chronic poverty of the cultiva- 

* The acreage irrigated by government irrigation works on the 
31st of March, 1900, was 13,430,841, for the whole of India. 

^Famine Facts and Fallacies, by J. D. Rees. CLE. 

^ Famines and Land Assessment, by Romesh Dutt, CLE., vol. 
xiv., pp. 16, 17. 

26 



IN FAMINE LAND 

tors" are due to over-assessment of the soil on the part 
of the government. He says: "The land is fertile, the 
people are peaceful and loyal, and generations of British 
administrators have been trained in the duties of Indian 
administration. And yet famines have not disappeared. 
The immediate cause of famines in almost every instance 
is the failure of rains, and this cause will continue to 
operate until we have a more extensive system of 
irrigation than has yet been provided. But the in- 
tensity and frequency of recent famines are greatly due 
to the resourceless condition and the chronic poverty of 
the cultivators, caused by the over-assessment of the 
soil on which they depend for their living." 

He goes on to say that " We have no wars within the 
natural frontiers of India now, but peace has not 
brought with it a reduction in the public expenditure 
or in the public debt. India," he says, "maintains the 
most expensive foreign government on earth, and one- 
third or one-half of the net revenues of India is sent out 
of India every year, instead of being spent in the coun- 
try to fructify her industry and trades. Land revenue 
is the most important item of the Indian revenues, and 
so it happens that the taxation falls heavily on the 
cultivators of the soil, and reduces them to a state of 
chronic poverty. They can save nothing in years of 
good harvest, and consequently every year of drought 
is a year of famine." He therefore maintains, and 
endeavors to prove by elaborate arguments, that the 
-intensity and disastrous effect of famines "can be to a 
great extent mitigated by moderating the land-tax, 
by the construction of irrigation works, and by the 
reduction of public debt and the expenditure of India." 



IV 

THE GREAT FAMINE 
"And the famine was sore in the land." — Genesis, xliii., i. 

There is no doubt that the famine through which 
India passed in 1 899-1 900 is the most severe on record, 
or, perhaps, the greatest drought in the world. The 
official report of the famine of 1896-97 states that^ 
"the famine affected an area of about two hundred 
and twenty-five thousand square miles in British India, 
and a population of sixty -two millions. The area, 
which was severely affected, and to which relief opera- 
tions were chiefly confined, may be put roughly at 
one hundred and twenty -five thousand square miles, 
with a population of thirty-four millions. In the direct 
relief of distress, apart from loans and advances to land- 
holders and cultivators and remissions of land revenue, 
727 lakhs of rupees (Rs. 7,270,000) were expended by 
the state. Relief was thus given to 821,000,000 of 
persons, at an average cost of 1.42 annas a day for each 
person relieved. This is equivalent to an average of 
2,220,000 persons relieved day by day for the space of 
one year, at the rate of Rs. 32.7 per head per annum. 
It was the opinion of the Famine Commission, judging 
by the experience of the past, that the largest population 
likely to be severely affected by any future famine in 
British India might be put at about thirty millions, 

^Famine Commission, 1898, p. 196. 
28 



IN FAMINE LAND 

that the average number of persons in such a famine 
likely to require relief continuously for one year might 
be put at from two to two and a half millions, and that 
the average cost of such relief would be about Rs. 50 a 
head a year." 

India covers 1,574,450 square miles, and has a popu- 
lation of 290,000,000. The famine area of 1899-1900 
covered more than four hundred thousand square 
miles, and affected quite sixty millions of people, or 
more than one-fifth of the entire population. It has 
cost the government the enormous sum of ten crores of 
rupees, besides advances made to landholders and cul- 
tivators, and there must be added to that the amount 
contributed by private charity.^ As will be seen from 
a study of the accompanying map, it embraced all the 
central and western parts of India, from Hyderabad 
to Lahore and from Jabalpur to Kathiawar. Begin- 
ning in the Deccan, all the fair southland was more 
or less smitten. It commenced with the failure of the 
monsoon in 1899. In March, 1900, when the worst 
had not been reached, a visitor wrote : 

" The barren lands of the Deccan, none too rich at best 
of times, are fast being turned into tracts of dismal, sun- 
cracked, desert -chirred earth, whose friable edges are 
caught by the wind and sent flying in clouds of pungent 
dust. No water in the wells; no water in the rivers. 
This is the report that comes in from the districts, and 
you can easily test it for yourself. . . . The central hor- 
ror of this famine lies in the fact that the misery and 
torment of a water famine have to be endured, together 
with a famine of food for people and fodder for beasts." 

* Report of Viceroy to Legislative Coiincil, October, 1900. 

29 



IN FAMINE LAND 
The same writer^ goes on to say: 

" During the last few days I have met scores of fam- 
ily parties on tramp to the works, the mother carrying 
the latest born in a basket on her head and the last but 
one in her arms or on her back, and the father and 
elder children dividing the burden of family goods, 
which generally consist of a few pots, a bundle in a 
blanket, and perhaps the hand-mill for grinding. A 
woman came marching into a camp in Khandesh the 
other day with two babies in the basket on her head, 
one in each arm, and another couple clutching at her 
sari. It is sad to see these groups of refugees pacing 
the burning dust, with lips and throats too parched for 
speech, their garments often in shreds and their eyes 
hollow with hunger. The Indian in these parts never 
seems to be sorry for himself or to look for sympathy 
from others." 

Coming farther north, the whole of the Central 
Provinces were overwhelmed by it. When the famine 
was at its worst, in August, nearly two and a half millions 
of people were on relief works, or about a fourth of the 
population. All that part of the Central Provinces in 
the northern part of the Deccan, between the Ner- 
budda and the Godavari, was dried up. Much of these 
provinces is composed of jungle -covered hills, where 
dwell many of the aboriginal tribes that were pressed 
back by the incursions of the Aryan immigrants. But 
where their ancient enemies, the Hindus, could not 
come, a more implacable foe, the famine, had found them 
out, and the people were living on the roots, seeds, bark, 
and leaves of trees. The Gonds, Kurus, and Bhils are 

* Mr. Vangham Nash, in The Great Famine, pp. 12, 14. 
30 



IN FAMINE LAND 

a hardy people, but it was not much food they could 
get out of the young leaves of the pipal-tree or the roasted 
kernel of mango stones. Jabalpur, Bilaspur, Raipur, 
and Hurda languished under the awful drought. In 
every village there was "cleanness of teeth." In May, 
out of a population of ten and three-quarter millions in 
the districts affected, close upon a million and three- 
quarters were on government relief. Later on the 
numbers had advanced to two millions and a half. In 
Raipur, the great rice -growing district, six hundred 
thousand, or forty per cent, of the people, were on relief; 
and at Bilaspur, the neighboring division, a quarter of a 
million. 

Cholera, of course, added its horrors to the rest. 
Even when there was food for the people, they could not 
be restrained from using contaminated water. A visitor 
to the famine camp at Tamerni, in May, saw "inside the 
two hospital sheds of wattle and mud a score or so of 
patients, with their women folk about them. Mothers 
were hanging over their children, brushing away the 
flies and moistening their lips, and in one corner of the 
shed stood a woman whose husband lay sick unto death, 
fanning him with her crimson sari. It was hot jnside — 
anything from a hundred and five to one hundred and 
ten degrees — the sun came streaming in through the 
cracks in the roof of the matting, and the people were 
inconveniently crowded . ' ' 

The Bombay Presidency, and all along the coast from 
Baluchistan to Mysore, came under the awful drought. 

Rev. E. Fairbank, of Wadala, after visiting the relief 
camp near his station early in the year, wrote to the 
Christian Herald: 

"Three years ago at the end of the famine there 
was less wretchedness and starvation than I saw here 

31 



IN FAMINE LAND 

to-day at the beginning of the famine. The misery 
is terrible. But still worse is the fearful emaciation, 
Living skeletons are on every side. The village kul- 
karani tells me that the children die soon after they 
reach the camp, being too far gone to recover. They 
might have lived had help reached them earlier. Last 
night a man died here who had travelled a long dis- 
tance without proper nourishment, and had eaten abso- 
lutely nothing during the last three days of his journey. 
"This famine is undoubtedly more severe in these 
parts than that of '76 or that of '96. One of the worst 
features is the lack of water. Rivers, usually flowing 
full at this time, are dry beds of sand. Wells that have 
never before failed in the memory of any one living 
have not a drop of water in them. The well that waters 
our garden, and has never failed since my father came 
here almost forty -five years ago, is dry this year." 

Rev. E. S. Hume, of Byculla, Bombay, also wrote: 
"The present famine is affecting the higher castes and 
the well-to-do classes far more than the former famine 
did. There are places not far from Bombay, where 
whole companies of women, who not long ago were in 
comfortable circumstances, will gather, stark naked, 
around a stranger to beg for food and clothing. I saw 
distress in 1897, during the famine, but nothing to com- 
pare with that which is covering the land this year." 

Rev. H. G. Bissell, of Ahmadnagar, tells this pathetic 
story : 

"There is not a village in this whole district with- 
out its scores of empty houses witnessing to the whole- 
sale desertion by sufferers from the famine. Hus- 
bands and fathers, in despair of caring for their wives 
and children, are abandoning them to fate and wander- 

32 



IN FAMINE LAND 

ing about irresponsibly in search of food. Not a month 
ago two children — little girls between four and five 
years of age — were found seated together near a cactus 
hedge. Each was supplied with a heap of the red, 
thorn-covered cactus fruit. The poor waifs were ques- 
tioned, but were evidently so reduced by hunger that 
they seemed not to comprehend where they were, who 
had left them, or what they wanted. 

"What mothers, delicate women, and children are 
suffering this season in the relief camps is past finding 
out. The government can plan for and relieve them 
only in a general way, and is doing so extensively, but 
private charity alone can meet exceptional cases. The 
struggle against want and hunger and cold and death 
is a desperate one this year." 

In Gujarat, between the bays of Cutch and Cambay, 
and especially in Kathiawar, the famine was unusually 
severe. Gujarat, as a rule, has been exempt from 
famine, and hence the people were not prepared for what 
occurred. A lady writing from Ahmedabad, in Febru- 
ary, 1900, says: 

"According to the prognostications of the news- 
papers, the famine is month by month increasing in 
severity. It is calculated, however, that it has not 
yet reached its worst point. Rain cannot be expected 
until June, therefore distress will grow greater daily. 
As the resources of the people fail, the number of the 
starving must necessarily increase. The government 
have a terrible problem to solve— the famine is the 
worst they have ever had to grapple with. In the 
famine of 1897 and 1898, they received 150 lakhs of 
rupees ($5,000,000) from Great Britain and the colonies, 
the contributions of the charitable, but this year, 
3 33 



IN FAMINE LAND 

through the sad war in South Africa, they have not 
been able to receive such help. Yet in the 1897 famine, 
on New Year's Day only 1,000,000 persons were in 
receipt of relief; this year at the same date 2,750,000 
were on the hands of the government, and since that 
time the number has nearly doubled. The prospects 
are gloomy and terrible indeed. 

"The high-caste people are selling their wives' silver 
ornaments, and starving themselves in a weary struggle 
to try and keep some of their bullocks alive ; for what 
can they do next monsoon, if they have no animals to 
plough with? And yet how fruitless and weary this 
struggle is is too plainly seen by the skeletons of the 
poor dead cattle to be seen on every hand in the villages. 
A few low-caste people who have managed to get a little 
capital have been able to do a good trade in skins and 
bones, but they are only a few, and it is a ghastly 
thought, reminding us of the vultures we constantly see 
in the fields holding their carnival of death. Sad sights 
and sounds are all around us. Yesterday a poor, 
desolate woman with five children came here, having 
walked fifty miles to beg us to take her children. She 
was formerly a woman in respectable circumstances. 
Daily, people come asking us to buy their little ones 
for a pound or two of grain. A young woman died 
of starvation outside our house a few days ago. 

"What has increased the sufferings of the poor is 
that for the last ten days the most terrible cold snap 
has set in. We Europeans, in our good houses and with 
sufficiency of clothing and food and bedding, do not 
know how to keep ourselves warm — what must be the 
sufferings of these starving masses ? What pitiful stories 
we hear! In one village where our people needed a 
house, one poor starving family, to secure the eightpence 
a month rent, turned out to live on the road." 

34 



IN FAMINE LAND 

Of the Panch Mahals, or five districts, in the eastern 
part of Gujarat, a jungle where the Bhils and Kalis have 
reclaimed some land and live by farming, hunting, and 
sometimes by stealing, it could be said early in May, 
1900: 

" Nearly adjoining the poorhouse at Godhra is a 
camp of 14,000 toiling sufferers. In spite of all that 
can be done for them, their condition is pitiable to a 
degree scarcely capable of realization. Men, women, and 
children are living out in the open, dried-up bed of a 
large lake, with nothing but a bamboo mat between them 
and the fierce sun, day after day. The little ones cry 
for water, but as they open their little mouths they 
are filled with the blinding hot dust which has been 
stirred up by 30,000 restless feet. 

"As the remainder of the water gradually evaporated 
in the fierce heat, the people were surprised to see the 
fish so close they could be caught by hand. For two 
or three whole nights the famishing crowds seized, 
cooked, and devoured the fish as fast as they could. 
It is supposed that many of them ate fish which had 
turned fetid, but whatever the cause, a fearful form of 
Asiatic cholera broke out so suddenly that about two 
hundred perished the first day. Then the panic seized 
the multitude, and they fied in all directions, throwing 
down their tools and abandoning their dead and dying. 
The air became laden with the stench of putrefying 
bodies. While riding over to the burning ground be- 
hind my bungalow, to see that the bodies were being 
properly disposed of, I found that the bearers of the 
dead had themselves been stricken down in front of the 
pyre. The civil surgeon and I administered some medi- 
cine, and did all we could, but they collapsed. A young 
woman was carrying bricks for the Mission Orphanage 

35 



IN FAMINE LAND 

yesterday. She suddenly sank down on the ground, 
and, in spite of all that we could do, died within four 
hours. Her husband heard the news at four in the 
afternoon, and three hours afterward he also was dead. 
Their child followed. The people suddenly fall in the 
midst of conversation, and rapidly sink. In spite of all 
that the authorities can do the fearful disease has been 
spread abroad, and none of us can yet say what the 
end will be. 

" The smell of burning bodies kept me awake a greater 
part of last night, and, even as I write, one of my workers 
calls out that a man is dying under the hedge of the 
compound. From early morning until dusk, parties 
of men under the collector and other officers are out 
gathering up the bodies of the dead. Whichever way 
we turn we discover these ghastly corpses, twisted and 
bloated, in almost every position which agony can 
produce. Cart-load after cart-load arrives at the poor- 
house under a police guard, and we set ourselves to sort 
out the living from the dead, because the stretcher- 
bearers are fleeing, and so the people are being brought 
in as best can be managed. During the last few days 
a thousand bodies have been picked up. 

"Dr. Nightingale sets off in the morning with some 
food and medicine on the heads of coolies, and thus 
renders first aid. Some of the poor creatures die with 
the medicine in their mouths." 

The Rev. Dennis Clancy, who visited the famine 
country in May, wrote: "It is at its worst in Rajputana 
and Gujarat, and the people who have suffered most 
from it are the Bhils, a hill tribe in the northern part 
of Gujarat. Forty per cent, of the people have already 
died from famine, and, as it is so difficult to get relief 
to them, owing to their distance from the railroads and 

36 




THE DEAD PIT DAILY COMPANY 



IN FAMINE LAND 

the roughness of the country, it is thought that at least 
forty per cent, more will die before the famine ends. 
The English government has been doing its utmost to 
relieve these people, as well as all other famine sufferers. 
As early as last cold weather, government sent 200 
camels loaded with grain into this country, and since 
then the political officers have been employing many 
more, as the need increased. By means of this camel 
transport they have been supplying a large number of 
relief works under their care, and also some of the 
kitchens of the local missionaries. In order to keep the 
Bhils from plundering these trains, it is necessary for 
Sepoy escorts to accompany all convoys and stocks of 
grain. The missionaries here, as in other famine dis- 
tricts, are doing much to relieve the suffering. A mis- 
sionary of the Church Missionary Society, the Rev. C. S. 
Thompson, did heroic work there, until he was stricken 
down with cholera and died after a few hours' suffer- 
ing, attended only by his native servant, who died a 
few hours after his master. He was about one hundred 
miles from the railroad, doing relief work, and died tm- 
der a tree. The tidings of his death did not reach his 
mission until about a week after he died. Then there 
were a large number who volunteered to take his place." 
Mr. Hume wrote to Dr. Klopsch as follows: "Rev. 
W. Mulligan, of Ranch Mahal, writes: 'Already our 
home has received twenty little waifs, and this morning 
the police asked us if we could not take a dozen more. 
I would have liked to accept them, but we have now 
as many as we can feed. The other day a Bhil woman 
was trying to sell her niece. The best offer she could 
get was five quarts of grain. She refused it and brought 
the girl to us.' Mrs. Fuller, of the Alliance Mission, re- 
ports that she has already taken charge of sixty orphan 
children. Rev. E. Fairbank, of Wadala, writes: 'Our 

37 



IN FAMINE LAND 

helpers are continually beset by people begging for a 
mouthful of grain. People come to us by the score, 
pitifully entreating us to help them. One poor fellow 
was so weak that in bending forward to make the cus- 
tomary salaam he could not recover himself, and fell 
on his face and was unable to rise.' Rev. J. B. Bawa, 
of Roha, reports the increase around him of the num- 
ber of starving people, especially of helpless women." 

In the Central India Agency, composed of sixty-four 
native states, which are more or less subject to the 
authority of Great Britain, lying between Rajputana 
and the Central Provinces, and which must be dis- 
tinguished from them, the ravages of famine were un- 
speakable. In May, 1900, there were about two him- 
dred thousand people on government relief works. 

The whole of Rajputana,^ with its twenty feudatory 
states and its 12,000,000 inhabitants, was affected, 
and, like many other places, it was jiist righting itself 
from the severe famine of 1897 when this awful storm 
struck it. 

Miss Marks, of Ajmir, wrote to the Christian Herald 
in March : ' ' Three years ago the Christian Herald's ap- 
peal to its readers for help resulted in the missionaries 
in India being able to succor thousands of famished 
people. We little thought then that like appeals would 
soon be needed; but famine, as gaunt and terrible as 
before, is now here, menacing millions of people. The 
centre of the trouble has now changed to Rajputana, 
though other districts are affected to a deplorable extent. 
We are daily witnesses of distress and suffering that are 
absolutely indescribable. Three weeks ago a company 

* If in this book the author has more to say about the famine in 
Rajputana than in other provinces, it is only because he had larger 
personal experience there, it falling to his lot to administer famine 
relief in that needy ileld. 

38 



IN FAMINE LAND 

numbering 2000 passed through Kishangarh — a town 
near us — having sought help in another district. They 
had been disappointed, for they found famine every- 
where, and they were returning in despair to their own 
villages. They said that hundreds had died of exhaus- 
tion and starvation by the road-side. It is awful to see 
the emaciated creatures and hear their cries. Even 
at this early stage of the calamity we cannot stir out 
without seeing children, and grown people too, who are 
mere skeletons." 

There was scarcity in the whole of the Punjab, and 
severe famine over the southern part, and it was special- 
ly felt in the district of Hissar, of which we read: "The 
people of Hissar, in numbers that fluctuate from a 
hundred thousand to a hundred and sixty thousand, 
according to the work to be got elsewhere, are digging 
tanks and living in famine camps. Numbers of villages 
are absolutely deserted, and for more than six months 
past the worst famine within human memory has had 
its grip on Hissar. The scarcity of food is worst in this 
southern corner of the Punjab, but the fodder famine 
throughout the whole province has reached a point of 
such intensity that the Lieutenant-Governor has just 
declared that, in spite of all the efforts of the local gov- 
ernment and the government of India, it is impossible 
to secure supplies for keeping life even in the indispen- 
sable plough cattle." 

To sum up : All the western part of India, the 
Deccan, including the Nizam's dominions, the Central 
Provinces, the Central India Agency, the Bombay Pres- 
idency, including Gujarat (comprising Kathiawar, Cutch, 
and Borada), Sind, and Rajputana and the Punjab, 
especially the southern part, were hit by this awful 
famine. Mr. John Elliott, in his careful forecast of the 
monsoon of 1900, wrote, before the famine was at its 

39 



IN FAMINE LAND 

worst, that " the drought of 1897 extended over a larger 
area and was more severe than has occurred during the 
previous 200 years. So far as can be judged from the 
data collected by the Famine Commission, the drought 
of 1897 and the subsequent famine of 1 899-1 900, are 
unique in their extent of area, and probably also in their 
intensity. No such complete failure of the rains, after 
the first month of the monsoon, is on record." 

On the 19th of January, 1900, the Viceroy of India 
held a special meeting of his council in Calcutta to 
consider the situation. At this time it was known from 
official estimates that in British territory about twenty- 
two million people were affected, and in the native 
states about twenty-seven millions more, or in all more 
than forty -nine millions of people were either starving 
or in great distress, while in many places cattle were 
being annihilated. The Viceroy, Lord Curzon, said the 
famine area had expanded, surpassing . the worst fears, 
and they were now facing a cattle, water, and food 
scarcity of a terrible character. About three million 
five hundred thousand persons were already receiving 
relief. While in 1897 the world shared India's sorrow 
and contributed hundreds of thousands of pounds tow- 
ards the relief fund, India now would have to struggle 
alone, for the thoughts of every Englishman in the 
world were centred on South Africa. 

The outside world can have but a faint idea of the 
disastrous effect of the condition of things so coldly 
described in the official statement given, but the follow- 
ing extract, from the letter of a Bombay official, dated 
from Ahmedabad, affords some slight indication of it. 
He says: " I came here on tour, and find there is every 
evidence of famine, but the wholesale mortality of cattle 
is the most striking feature at present. I am afraid this 
will be the worst famine the Bombay Presidency, and 

40 



IN FAMINE LAND 

India generally, has had for very many years past, the 
area is so extensive and the failure of grass and crops 
so absolute, in addition to which the water supply is 
failing. In this usually fertile province of Gujarat, 
Rajputana, and Kathiawar they have had no such 
visitation within the century, and in the Deccan, alas! 
this is the second acute famine in three years. I went 
to the poor-house here, which has only been started a 
short time, for people who are picked up about the city 
precincts too weak to work and exhausted from want of 
food. There are already 220 in the house, little better 
than living skeletons. Some die every day in the poor- 
house. It is only the beginning of what will get worse, 
more acute, every month for at least six months to 
come. There is not the slightest doubt that were the 
British government not here now, whole provinces 
would get depopulated; and with all the resources at 
our command the government is scarcely able to stand 
the drain on its resources." It should be remembered 
that India had not yet recovered from the great famine 
of 1897, and that in parts of the famine-stricken area 
the plague also was epidemic and tending to spread, 
and that the war in Africa was demanding the nation's 
most liberal resources, and it was a time to husband and 
not expend her reserves. 



THE FAMINE CODES 
"And they said, Thou hast saved our lives." — Genesis, xlvii., 25. 

A PROVISIONAL code for the guidance of officers in the 
time of famine was promulgated by the Indian govern- 
ment in 1883. Local governments were permitted to 
frame their own codes, and so there appeared separate 
codes for the different provinces. In 1889 the govern- 
ment sought to scrutinize these various codes, and hence 
the opinions of local governments on the working of the 
existing codes were taken. Revised codes were called 
for in 1893, and these form the basis of the present 
general famine code. 

The main method of relief depended upon by the 
government in famine times is a system of relief works. 
The classification of relief - workers as (i) professional 
laborers; (2) laborers, but not professional; (3) able- 
bodied, but not laborers; and (4) weakly workers, was 
adhered to, and it was determined that as the system 
advocated in the provisional code of forming relief -work- 
ers into gangs had proved successful, workers, after 
having been duly classified, should be formed into 
gangs, and a task prescribed for each gang, on the 
performance of which, in whole or in part, each member 
of the gang should be entitled to the wage prescribed 
for his class, in whole or in part, in proportion to the 
amount of the task performed by the whole gang. The 

42 



IN FAMINE LAND 

tendency of these orders was to abolish the original 
plan of, so far as possible, employing all the able-bodied 
on piece-work, and allowing them to earn thereby some- 
thing above the full ration wage by doing a full task. 
The use of the term ' ' piece-work ' ' in the codes was 
forbidden in future on the ground that piece-work, or 
payment by results, in famine operations, as distinguish- 
ed from piece-work in the ordinary sense of the term, 
must be limited by the estimated and not the actual 
capacity of those employed. The sufficiency of the 
minimum ration, which had been questioned, was re- 
affirmed, but at the same time the method of calculating 
the wage from the ration, known as the "grain- 
equivalent" method, was introduced, and this practically 
allowed some increase in the scale of wages. Permis- 
sion was also given to local governments, under certain 
conditions, to relieve the non-working children and de- 
pendants of relief - workers by means of allowances to 
the working members of the family, though for many 
reasons the government of India preferred that, when- 
ever practicable, such persons should be separately 
relieved by the distribution of grain or of food cooked in 
kitchens. 

The code first provides for regular reports of the 
seasons, crops, etc., in ordinary times, and the early 
apprisal of the approach of scarcity or famine in any 
part of the land, and indicates the preliminary action 
to be taken where there is distress, or likely to be 
distress. Perhaps in no country in the world are there 
such complete and elaborate reports made of crops, 
prices, rainfall, health of cattle, and all other circum- 
stances affecting agricultural prospects. The code has 
most elaborate rules and regulations for the conduct 
of relief measures and the duties of superior revenue 
and engineer officers during famine. 

43 



IN FAMINE LAND 
The matter has been thus stated by the code:^ 

"The general scheme is to make the administrative 
area, called the district, the unit of famine relief ad- 
ministration, the district officer, subject to the general 
control of the commissioner of the division, being the 
agent of government for carrying out the measures of 
relief that may be determined on. The district officer 
is responsible for exercising general supervision over all 
works and arrangements for giving relief within his 
district and for their efficiency, and officers of all de- 
partments employed on famine duty within the limits 
of his district are subject to his orders on all points 
except those of a strictly professional nature. In ad- 
dition to the staff ordinarily at his disposal for the 
current administration of his district, including, as it 
does, officers of such departments as the revenue, 
the police, and the medical departments, it is main- 
ly through the agency of the officers of the public 
works department, and of the establishments of lo- 
cal bodies constituted by law within the district, 
that the district officer carries out the measures of 
relief." 

In the code the various forms of relief are clearly 
indicated and the rules for their operation stated. The 
following are the leading relief measures:^ 

(i) Circle organization, or the system by which affected 
districts are divided into circles of convenient size for 
relief administration; (2) Gratuitous relief, at the homes 
of the people, to the physically infirm who have no 
m.eans of support; (3) Relief works for those who are 
able to earn their support, and who are given wages 

^Report, p. 46. ^Famine Commission, 1898, p. 49. 

44 



IN FAMINE LAND 

graduated according to their respective strength and 
physical requirements. The code defines rations that 
are to be given to certain classes — as the full ration, for 
the able-bodied , the minimum ration, for weakly laborers 
and adult dependants; the penal ration, for those re- 
fusing to work; the proportional ration, for children of 
various ages and requirements. All the codes provide 
that the money wage may be deduced from the rations 
in either of two methods. Either the amount of money 
which at the current rates is sufficient to purchase the 
component items of the ration may be given, or the 
money value of the "grain-equivalent" of the ration. 
By ' ' grain-equivalent ' ' is meant the amount of grain 
of which the value is, in ordinary times, equivalent 
to the total value of the various items of the ration, 
and this is computed in all the codes to be one and 
three-quarters times the weight of the grain item 
itself. 

These rations and the wage scale have been pre- 
scribed by the government of India, and are generally 
adopted in all the codes. But some divergencies oc- 
cur, as, for example, in the case of children who are 
remunerated "according to age and requirements," and 
in the adjustment of the wage as current prices fluc- 
tuate. 

(4) Poor-houses, or "institutions for the reception 
and relief of persons unfit to work, who either have no 
homes or cannot conveniently be sent to their houses, 
and of persons in need of relief who are fit to work and 
wilfully refuse to labor." 

(5) Kitchens where cooked food is supplied at certain 
centres, often at relief works, to non-working children 
and adult dependants of relief-workers. 

(6) Relief to certain classes, as to (a) parda women; 
(b) artisans; (c) weavers. 

45 



IN FAMINE LAND 

(7) Orphanages where orphan children can be gath- 
• ered temporarily. 

(8) Protection of cattle when the pasture is about 
to fail. 

It should be remembered that the provincial codes 
often differ in some particulars, but, in general, the 
above is a fair outline of the forms of relief provided 
in India during a famine. What a striking illus- 
tration of an over-ruling Providence directed by wis- 
dom and intelligence and reaching out in its various 
forms to the remotest places and down to the poor- 
est and most needy subject ! It may have seemed 
at times like a great machine, but it was started, 
guided, and controlled by a thinking mind, which 
acted benevolently and ever for the good of the 
people. 

It is difficult to state accurately the amount that 
was allowed by government to those that are em- 
ployed on famine relief works ; but it may be said 
that, in general, all those who come to the relief 
works are classified and are paid in kind, or given 
its equivalent, as follows: 



Class 


Wage, in ounces 


Percentage of full 
wage 




42- 

38. 
32- 

28. 




CB) Laborers, but not professional 


90s 

76.2 


(D) Weakly, but fit for light employment 


66.6 



In the Provisional Code issued by the government of 
India in 1883, the full and minimum rations pre- 
scribed for workers, and the penal ration for laborers 
sent to a poor-house for refusing to work, are given, as 
follows : 

46 



IN FAMINE LAND 



Description of ration 


For a 
man 


For a 
woman 


For children 


Full 


Flour, of the common grain used in the 


lb. oz. 

I 8 
o 4 
o i 

O I 
O I 


lb. oz. 

I 4 
4 
i 
i 



i. i. and i. 

according 
to age and 
require- 
ments 




Pulse 

Salt 

Chee, or oil 

Condiments and vegetables 








Minimum 


Flour, of the common grain used in the 

country, or cleaned rice 

Pulse. . . '. 

Salt , 


I o 

O 2 

o i 

o i 
o i 


14 
2 
i 
i 
i 


J,i, and}, 
according 
to age and 
require- 




Condiments and vegetables 




Penal 




o 14 
I 

i 


12 

I 

i 


Not stated 




Pulse 

Salt 





The original Famine Commissioners gave their opinion 
as to the amount of food required for workers and non- 
workers as follows: 



"The conclusion we draw from a careful examination 
of the evidence of authorities in all parts of India is, 
that an average ration of about one and one-half pounds 
per diem of the meal or flour of the common, coarser 
grain of the country suffices for an ordinary working 
adult male. In the rice-eating countries an equal weight 
of rice may be accepted in lieu of flour, and in any case 
the ration should include a suitable proportion of pulse. 
A man doing light work would require about one and 
one-quarter pounds; and the ration which consists of 
one pound of flour with a little pulse has been found 
sufficient to support life in numerous relief -houses, where 
no work is exacted, all over the country. On these 
bases the diet scale should be built up, it being under- 
stood that a female requires a little less than a male, a 
child below twelve years of age about half the allow- 
ance of an adult male, and a non-working child below 

47 



IN FAMINE LAND 

six or seven about half as much as a working child. On 
relief works, however, where a money wage is given, the 
rate of pay should be such as to leave a slight margin 
above the actual cost of the flour, so as to allow for the 
purchase of salt, pepper, and other condiments, and 
firewood, and to avoid the risk of the wage being in- 
sufficient to purchase the full ration of food. Whenever 
it is necessary to supply people with a kind of food to 
which they are unaccustomed, the result should be 
carefully watched, and endeavor should be made to 
counteract, by some adjustment of the dietary, the un- 
favorable results which will probably arise from the 
change." 

The government resolution of 1893^ "directed that 
the wage of each class might be expressed in terms of 
the grain equivalent, which was defined as ' the amount 
of grain of which the value is in ordinary times equivalent 
to the total value of the various items of the ration,' 
the grain selected as a basis for calculation being in 
every case the ' staple or staples in ordinary consumption 
in the affected tracts, and not the more expensive classes 
of grain, which, though occasionally consumed in times 
of plenty, are abandoned for cheaper grains as soon 
as pressure sets in.' It was added that, 'after a careful 
review of the statistics indicating the relations existing 
at various times in each province between the price 
of the staple grain and the prices of other items of the 
ration, the Governor-General in Council is satisfied that 
the cost of the other items in the minimum adult male 
ration will seldom, if ever, be found to be more than 
three-quarters of the grain item.' Under the method 
of grain equivalents, therefore, the grain equivalent of a 

* Report, 1898, p. 260, 
48 



IN FAMINE LAND 

given ration would be equal to one and three-quarter 
times the weight of the grain item. It was recognized 
that under this method there would generally be a 
margin in favor of the worker, which would increase 
as scarcity intensifies and the price of grain rises, and 
decrease as prices fall ; but his Excellency the Governor- 
General in Council did 'not regard this result as a 
serious disadvantage.' It was, however, provided that 
in cases when the assumption of the one-and-three- 
quarter ration would lead to a material diminution in the 
margin, or to an extravagant expansion of it, the wage 
might be calculated, from time to time, in terms of the 
money value of all the component items of the ration 
at current prices." 

The Famine Commission of 1898, in their recommend- 
ed alms, modified the previous classification of those 
relieved and the wage scale, as follows: "They would 
divide all the relieved into, first, workers, and, secondly, 
gratuitously relieved — the workers to include (i) diggers, 
(2) carriers, (3) working children between eight and 
twelve years of age, and the non- workers, (4) adult 
dependants, and (5) non - working children. They 
further recommended that "the new Class I. should be 
entitled to the full wage for an adult man, while the 
wage for Class II. will be seventy -five per cent, of this. 
Working children, or Class III., should be paid about 
half the wage for Class II. Adult dependants, or Class 
IV., should receive the minimum wage, and non-working 
children about half of this allowance." 

The provisional wage proposed for all classes, except 
for workers of special quahfications, in terms of the 
chattaks (a measure equal to one-sixteenth of the Indian 
seer, or one-six-hundred-and-fortieth of the maund of 
eighty-two and two-seventh pounds) — i.e., the equivalent 
of nearly 2.051 ounces, is given as follows: 
4 49 



IN FAMINE LAND 

Chattaks 

Class I. Diggers 20 

" II. Carriers 15 

" III. Working children 8 

,, jY j Adult dependants ( 
I Minimtim wage. > 
" V. Non-working children. 

(i.) Over 8 years 7 

(ii.) Under 8 years 5 

"As regards nursing mothers, we would allow them 
the wage of their class, which will usually be fifteen 
chattaks, along with the non-working child's allowance 
of five chattaks. In other words, a nursing mother 
will receive the full wage of twenty chattaks for herself 
and child." 

I have given the code scales thus somewhat at length, 
that it may be seen how systematically the whole scheme 
of feeding and relieving the famine-stricken people of 
India has been worked out by government. Of course, 
in practice, it has been found that it is necessary at 
times to deviate from the code scale, and it is to the 
credit of famine relief-officers that they have done so 
when necessary.^ 

It would seem from reading the dry details of the 
code that there is much red-tape and inflexibility about 
these rules, and, as the Commissioners themselves 
admit, ^ "in the effort to safeguard the public funds 
and to prevent relief works from attracting persons not 
actually in want, the wage rate has, at times and places 
in the recent famine, been allowed to drop below the 
point at which the worker's subsistence is assured" ; but 

^ The late Famine Commission (1901) recommends a less liberal 
scale of wages and daily payments by results, they being of the 
opinion that in some places the relief was so liberal that it became 
demoralizing. 

^Report, 1898, p. 196. 

50 



IN FAMINE LAND 

it should be remembered that government has for years 
made a profound study of Indian famines, and these 
rules have been tested by experience and found to be, 
in most respects, the best possible under the circum- 
stances. In carrying out the details there may be 
hardships inflicted, and it is difficult to utterly abolish 
indifference, inefficiency, and dishonesty among sub- 
ordinates ; but, as a whole, it is a wonderful scheme for 
the rescue and relief of the starving men, women, and 
children of India. 

It should be borne in mind that during the late 
famine, in pursuance of the recommendation of the 
Commission of 1898, the relief was more liberal than 
had been given hitherto, and became more so as the 
famine increased in severity. The Viceroy, in his state- 
ment to the Legislative Council, says: "The preceding 
famine had bequeathed experiences and lessons of the 
utmost value, which were carefully gathered up by the 
Commission of 1898, and which have profoundly affected 
the policy of the present famine. The stress laid by 
the Commission on the necessity for starting relief before 
the people had run down; their advocacy of more ex- 
tensive gratuitous relief, especially in the form of kitchen 
relief; their recommendations concerning the special 
treatment of aboriginal and forest tribes ; their approval 
of small or village relief works — these and other injunc- 
tions will be found to have influenced our measures and 
shaped our course throughout the famine. The Com- 
mission's recommendations were generally in the. direc- 
tion of greater flexibility in relief methods and greater 
liberality of relief. ... In the present famine we have 
broken new ground, and, acting on the lessons of its 
predecessor, have accepted a higher standard of moral 
and financial obligation than has ever before been rec- 
ognized in this or any country. There is no parallel 

51 



IN FAMINE LAND 

in the history of India, or in that of any country in the 
world, to the total of over six million persons who, in 
British India and the native states, have for weeks 
on end been dependent upon the charity of government." 
The Report of the Famine Commission of 1901, just 
issued, while confirming in the main the measures rec- 
ommended by its predecessors, puts great stress upon 
the importance of preparedness for famine. This can 
be insured by (a) an efficient system of intelligence; 
(6) effective programmes of relief works ; (c) reserves of 
establishment; (d) reserves of tools and plant. It places 
special emphasis upon "test works" as a means of as- 
certaining the condition of the people, and lays down 
the following practical rules for the guidance of the 
administration — viz., (a) put heart into the people; 
(b) proceed from the beginning on a comprehensive 
plan and publish it; (c) make liberal preparation in 
advance of pressure; (d) once the preparations have 
been made, wait on events; (e) bring from the outset 
influential non-official interests into touch with, and 
support of, the official organization ; (/) appoint a Famine 
Commissioner where the head of the local administration 
cannot be his own famine commissioner ; (g) create from 
the outset a thoroughly efficient accounts and audit 
establishment. 

In the opinion of the Commission, the wage allowed 
and the gratuitous relief given in the late famine were 
in many instances too liberal, but this "was due not 
so much to defects in the system of relief as to defects 
in the administration of it." The Report states that 
"while confirming the principles enunciated by the 
Commission of 1880, the Commission of 1898 departed 
from them in recommending a more liberal wage and a 
freer extension of gratuitous relief. Moreover, their 
repeated warnings against any measures of relief in- 

52 



IN FAMINE LAND 

volving an element of risk were, in effect, an invitation 
to recede from the strictness, or, as we prefer to call 
it, the prudent boldness of the former policy." Coming 
to the subject of the wage, in discussing its amount, 
the Commission condemn strongly the " minimum wage " 
{i.e., a fixed daily wage which is given regardless of work 
done), and recommend a system of "payment by 
results," with a maximum limit to daily earnings, and 
with relief to dependants. Concerning "gratuitous re- 
lief" they say, "there is no branch of famine relief 
administration in which it is more difficult to hit the 
happy mean." They divide this form of relief into — 
(a) relief of dependants on works; (6) poor-houses; 
(c) village relief by doles ; and {d) kitchens, with a pref- 
erence for the dole system. 



VI 

FAMINE RELIEF 

"I was eyes to the blind, 
Feet was I to the lame; 
I was father to the poor; 

The cause which I knew not, 
I searched out." 

It will remain to the everlasting credit of the British 
government, and stand as an example of man's humanity 
to man, that when India's "bitter cry" arose, imperial 
and private funds were available, and famine relief in 
every part of the affected area was commenced. The 
expenditure upon famine relief on the part of the im- 
perial government was enormous. The Viceroy, Lord 
Curzon, gave before the Legislative Council the fol- 
lowing statement: 

"The direct expenditure on famine relief in British 
India and Berar, from the commencement of relief 
operations to the end of August, had been 864 lakhs of 
rupees. It is estimated that the further expenditure 
will be about one hundred and fifty lakhs, to 31st of 
March, making in round numbers about ten crores of 
rupees (over ;^6,5oo,ooo). In loans and advances to 
landholders and cultivators we have expended 238 lakhs 
of rupees ; we have made advances for plough cattle and 
agricultural operations this autumn, free of interest, on 
very easy terms, in the expectation that not more than 

54 



IN FAMINE LAND 

one-half can be recovered. In the matter of land rev- 
enue the latest estimate is, that of 392 lakhs of rupees 
in Central Provinces and Bombay, 164 lakhs of rupees 
will be uncollected during the year. In the distressed 
districts of the Punjab, suspensions aggregating 41 lakhs 
of rupees are anticipated. With these figures I compare 
those for the famine of 1896-97, calling attention to the 
fact that in 1896-97 the area of population in British 
India affected by famine was considerably larger than 
in the present year. The total direct expenditure on 
famine relief was 727 lakhs of rupees, 130 lakhs were 
advanced in loans, and land revenue to an amount of 
about two crores was suspended. In this comparison a 
further outlay in connection with the relief of native 
states is omitted for the reason that in 1896-97 the 
calls in that respect were insignificant. The present 
famine loans to native states in Rajputana amounted 
to sixty-nine lakhs of rupees, native states in Bombay 
seventy-eight lakhs of rupees. Besides guaranteeing 
the repayment of loans to the amount of 105 lakhs 
borrowed in the market for other states, government 
had also to come to the assistance of Hyderabad, whose 
extensive dominions suffered from severe drought. In 
all, actual loans to native rulers in connection with 
the present famine amounted, in the aggregate, to 
over three and a half crores, exclusive of guaranteed 
loans. Without this assistance, it may be safely said 
that the states would have been wholly unequal to 
the task of relieving their subjects and in some 
cases of carrying on the ordinary administration of ter- 
ritories." 

Learning from the experience of the past, and from 
the facts gathered by the Famine Commission, which 
had but a short time before completed and published 

55 



IN FAMINE LAND 

its report of the famine of 1897, relief works, kitchens, 
poor-houses, orphanages, and famine camps, with com- 
mittees — imperial, provincial, and local — and officers 
of many grades and degrees of rank and efficiency to 
superintend them, were put in operation. In all, it 
was officially stated, 637 English and native servants 
of the crown were sent on famine duty in British and 
native territory by the imperial government. The 
one great object was to save life and mitigate distress. 
Many laid down their lives in their heroic efforts to save 
life. The work of benevolence commenced in earnest 
with the failure of the rains in 1899, and went forward, 
increasing in extent during the cold season, and on 
through the raging heat of 1900, rescuing, relieving, and 
feeding — ever in the midst of starvation and death — 
sometimes almost overwhelmed by epidemics of disease 
— fever, small-pox, dysentery, diarrhoea, and cholera — 
until the fruitful showers came again and a harvest gave 
food to the hungry. 

It was a great work. But when it was over the highest 
authority in the land could say no more than that 
"No endeavors which are in the power of the most 
philanthropic and generous of governments to put 
forward will avail to prevent an increase of mortality 
during severe famine. No relief system in the world 
will counteract the effects of reduced food supply, the 
cessation of wages, high prices, the break-up of homes 
of millions of people, or prevent famine being attended 
by pestilence." 

Through it all the government kept official reports of 
the numbers availing themselves of the relief afforded, 
which were also tests of the severity of the famine and 
a proof of the enormous work done to relieve the people. 
In March, the Viceroy wired the Secretary of State for 
India as follows: 

S6 



IN FAMINE LAND 

"Number of persons in receipt of relief: Bombay, 
1,249,000; Punjab, 211,000; Central Provinces, 1,513,- 
000; Berar, 355,000; Ajmir-Merwara, 112,000; Rajpu- 
tana States, 457,000; Central India States, 129,000; 
Bombay Native States, 468,000; Baroda, 60,000; North- 
western Provinces, 3000; Punjab Native States, 19,000; 
Central Provinces Feudatory States, 46,000; Hyderabad, 
246,000; Madras, 11,000. Total, 4,879,000." 

As an illustration of how the numbers increased as 
the famine grew worse, and also of its area, I include 
on the following two pages several weekly reports, fur- 
nished during the months of May and August, 1900. 
The third report, which gives almost the maximum 
numbers^ on relief works, was taken after the monsoon 
burst, but before any harvest was gathered. 

Besides this relief, received and administered officially 
through government channels, there was large private 
help, much of which passed through the hands of the 
Central Relief Committee, but many lakhs thus con- 
tributed were administered by special committees form- 
ed by benevolent societies. Concerning this the Viceroy 
said: 

"In 1896-97 the total collections amounted to 
170 lakhs, of which 10 remained at the beginning of 
the recent famine. In the present year the Central 
Relief Committee alone received close upon 140 
lakhs, not far short of ;^i,ooo,ooo sterling. Analyzing 
the subscriptions, we find that India contributed about 
the same amount as in 1896-97 — about 32 lakhs. . . . 
Collections abroad amounted to 108 lakhs, as against 
137 in 1896-97. The United Kingdom's contribution 

^ The maximum was reached in the second week in August, and 
amounted to more than six million three hundred thousand. 

57 



IN FAMINE LAND 



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2^S 



IN FAMINE LAND 



THE NUMBER OF PERSONS IN RECEIPT OF RELIEF DURING THE 
FIRST WEEK IN AUGUST, 1900, IN EACH PROVINCE 



Name of Province 

British Provinces 

Madras 

Bombay and Sind 

Bengal 

N. W. P. and Oudh 

Punjab 

Central Provinces 

Berar 

Ajmir-Merwara 

Total British Provinces 

Native States 

Rajputana States 

Central India States 

Mysore 

Hyderabad 

Baroda 

Bombay Native States 

Punjab Native States 

Central Provinces Feudatory States 
Kashmir (Jammu) 

Total Native States 

Grand Total 



Relief works 



Gratuitous 
relief 



5,231 

1,076,444 

14.293 

126,083 

374,434 

256,654 

61,014 



3,100 

507,540 

7,7^9 

1,493 

43,148 

1,895,151 

167,819 

30,003 



8,331 

1,583,984 

22,012 

1,493 

169,231 

2,269,585 

424,473 

91,017 



2,655,973 



201,200 

71,908 

288 

355,142 

87,375 

335,424 

22,724 

12,064 

503 



114,422 

44,827 

104,978 
34,843 
67,700 
19,419 
39,191 



4,570,126 



315 622 

116,735 

288 

460,120 

122,218 

403,124 

42,143 

51,255 

503 



1,086,628 



425,380 



1,512,008 



6,082,134 



reached 88-J lakhs, and compares indifferently with 132 
lakhs in 1896-97, but the circumstances of the year 
must be remembered. The liberal donation of Ger- 
many, at the instigation of the Emperor, has been 
publicly acknowledged ; and, finally, the United States, 
both directly and by means of privately contributed 
gifts of money and grain, has once more shown its 
vivid sympathy with England's mission and India's 
need." 



A notable instance of such benevolence was the 
Christian Herald fund, raised through the efforts of 
its proprietor. Dr. Louis Klopsch, in America. Be- 
sides the money raised and sent forward, the steam- 
ship Quito was loaded with 200,000 bags of com, 
valued at $100,000, and despatched to India, arriving 

59 



IN FAMINE LAND 

on the 28th of June. Concerning this great work, the 
editor of the Christian Herald makes the following 
statement : ^ 

"Our readers are already familiar with the story of 
the inception of the famine fund — how, late in the fall 
of 1899, yielding to the entreaty of kind-hearted Bishop 
Thoburn, the Christian Herald reopened its columns on 
behalf of stricken India, although it had but lately 
closed its campaign of benevolence for the famine suf- 
ferers of 1897. The response to its appeal was im- 
mediate and spontaneous. From all quarters of the 
Union, and even from other lands, letters poured in, 
vibrating with sympathy for the afflicted ones. Gifts, 
sanctified with prayers, came in a shower. With an 
efficient organization already in the field, the actual 
work of relief was promptly begim. The rest is his- 
tory — for the relief stations were opened, the starving 
multitudes fed and sheltered, the naked clad, the sick 
tended and succored, and the dying consoled. It is 
proved by statistics that, as a result of this great Christ- 
like work of mercy, hundreds of thousands of perishing 
men, women, and children were snatched from the brink 
of the grave. 

"As to the material resources employed in this greatest 
of benevolent campaigns, the official statement is most 
instructive. The net grand total of the relief fund, 
from all sources, was $641,071.97. This sum represented 
258,508 separate remittances, and these in turn rep- 
resented a much larger number of individuals, as some- 
times twenty, or even thirty, contributors were included 
in one letter. Receipts were sent to all contributors, 
involving a vast correspondence and the necessary 

*Thc Christian Herald, May i, 1901. 
60 



IN FAMINE LAND 

stationery and postage, each acknowledgment costing 
a little over two cents. Many of the letters called for 
the most careful consideration. On the whole, it is 
probable that no such immense volume of correspond- 
ence was ever before conducted so economically. The 
average single contribution — exclusive of the $40,000 
granted by the United States government for the charter 
of the steamship Quito — was about two dollars and 
thirty -five cents. Our own Christian Herald readers 
are to be congratulated on the fact that they contributed 
fully one -half of the entire fund, even including the 
government's gift. 

* ' Another matter exceedingly gratifying to every one 
who helped the fund is that the value of the Quito's 
cargo of American corn, on reaching India, was at least 
double its value here; therefore, the corn transaction, 
in its purely commercial aspect, was a fortunate one, 
since India reaped the benefit by receiving in value 
nearly one hundred thousand dollars more than can 
be indicated in the official report." 

Besides the Christian Herald fund there were a number 
of others, as that administered by the Americo-Indian 
Famine Relief Committee, Bombay, of which the Hon. 
W. T. Fee, American consul, was chairman, and the 
Sialkote Mission fund, and funds raised by the religious 
press, as the Christian, London; the Guardian, and the 
Indian Witness, of India. ^ In this way many lakhs 
of rupees were gathered and carefully expended in 
relieving the hunger and distress of the people. Up to 
October, 1900, the sum of 150 lakhs had been con- 
tributed to the India famine fund alone. 

* Among those who helped largely should be mentioned Rev. Colin 
S. Valentine, LL.D., F.R.C.S.E., Principal. Agra Medical Mission, 
■who gathered and distributed much money and medicines, 

61 



IN FAMINE LAND 

But in spite of all that could be done, many perished. 
Lord Curzon said, on October 19th, before the Leg- 
islative Council at Simla: "What the actual mortal- 
ity may have been it is impossible to tell with com- 
plete accuracy. At a later date the forthcoming census 
will throw useful light upon the problem." 

On the 2 1 St of March, 1901, that census was taken, 
and although the full returns are not yet published, yet 
it is known that in all the famine-stricken provinces, and 
especially in the native states, there has been an almost 
startling decrease, as the following table will show: 

Ajtnir-Merwara 66,000 

Berar 144,000 

Central Provinces States 177,000 

Hyderabad 362,000 

Baroda 464,000 

Bombay Proper 627,000 

Central Provinces 938,000 

Bombay States 1,167,000 

Central India States 1,816,000 

Rajputana 2,175,000 

In India the normal increase in population is one- 
half per cent, per annum, and this proportion is within 
the mark in ordinary times, so that during the past 
ten years not only has the normal increase of a million 
been overcome, but a decrease of nearly eight millions 
has taken place. The inference is that the greater part 
of this decrease is the result of the awful famines with 
which she has been afflicted during the last decade. 

While in many places the deaths from actual starva- 
tion were few, on account of the excellent relief arrange- 
ments, yet in some places the mortality was indescribable. 
As has been shown above, the death rate in the native 
states was very high, or, as the Viceroy describes it, 
"shocking." In the Central Provinces, in the later 

6a 



IN FAMINE LAND 

months of the famine, the death rate ran very high, in 
one district as high as 15.21 per mille. In Gujarat the 
following figures are given: "In Broach, the monthly- 
death rate rose from 2.96 per mille, in October, 1899, 
to 24.83 in May, 1900. In the Panch Mahals the death 
rate for the same month of May was 46.60 per mille; 
in Kaira 21.07; ^^ Ahmedabad, 24.00. These rates 
include deaths from cholera, a most virulent wave 
of which swept over Gujarat in April, although it is 
impossible to distinguish accurately between the mortal- 
ity for which cholera was directly responsible and that 
which was due to other diseases — to debility, to pri- 
vations and to the temporary disorganization of the 
camp." 

But loss of human life was not the only one resulting 
from the famine. It almost annihilated the working 
capital of the masses of the people — the agricultural 
classes — in the territory affected. "It is difficult," says 
the Viceroy, in summing up the material losses to the 
empire — "it is difficult to express in figures, with any 
close degree of accuracy, the loss occasioned by so 
wide-spread and severe a visitation, but it may rough- 
ly be put in this way: The annual agricultural pro- 
duction of India and Burma averages in value between 
three hundred and four hundred crores of rupees. On 
a very cautious estimate the production in 1 899-1 900 
must have been at least one-quarter, if not one-third, 
below the average. At normal prices the loss was at 
least seventy-five crores, or fifty million pounds sterling. 
In this estimate India is treated as a whole, but in 
reality the loss fell on a portion only of the continent, 
and ranged from almost total failure of crop in Guja- 
rat, Berar, Chhatisgarh, and Hissar, and in many of 
the Rajputana states, to twenty and thirty per cent, 
in districts of the Northwest Provinces and Madras, 

63 



IN FAMINE LAND 

which were not reckoned as falling within the famine 
tract. If to this be added the loss of some millions of 
cattle, some conception may be formed of the destruction 
of property which a great drought occasions. There 
have been many great droughts in India, but there has 
been no other of which such figures could be predi- 
cated as these." 

Says a recent writer:^ "A greater danger than the 
mutiny of 1857 not only threatens but has actually 
overtaken India, in the impoverishment of the people 
and the frequency and intensity of recent famines. And 
the highest type of courage and of statesmanship, such 
as was evinced by a Canning and a. Lawrence in the past, 
will be needed once more to save the empire, to moderate 
rents and taxes, to reduce debts and expenditure, to deal 
with India as England deals with her colonies in financial 
matters, and to associate the people of India in the 
control of their finances and the administration of their 
own concerns." 

But while it is true that the people of India are poor 
and famines are frequent, and that the wisest statesman- 
ship is required in dealing with the great social, economic, 
and financial problems involved, yet such writers as 
the above should remember that the people of India 
were poor under native rule, and that famines were 
quite as frequent and more fatal to life, and that no 
change of administration or acts of Parliament or 
measures passed by the Legislative Council can modify 
or intensify the southwest monsoon. 

In the Report of the Famine Commission of 1901 the 
subject of mortality is dealt with at length, and it is 
estimated that about one million and a quarter perished 
in British districts as the result of starvation and con- 

* Romesh Dutt, Famines in India, p. 20. 
64 



IN FAMINE LAND 

comitant diseases, and that about one -fifth of this 
mortality was caused by cholera, and that immigrants 
from native states accounted for about a quarter of a 
million deaths. This, of course, gives a very inadequate 
account of the mortality during the late famine, as the 
inquiries of the Commission were confined to British 
territory, and the famine was largely a native state 
famine. It is very difficult to tabulate, at such a time, 
mortuary statistics, for, in the awful stress of famine, 
thousands die far away from the sight of officials and 
statisticians, and make no sign. A correct government 
census report in the year after the famine should tell 
the sad story more correctly than anything else, and, as 
we have seen elsewhere, it leaves a large number in the 
famine territory on the dark side. The Commission 
admit a great mortality, and in endeavoring to account 
for it, say : " In dealing with the death rate of the recent 
famine, special allowance must be made for three facts : 
first, the extreme and unusual rigor of the winter of 
1 899-1 900, in some provinces; secondly, the shortness 
of the water supply, which led to its pollution; and, 
thirdly, the virulent epidemic of malarial fever in the 
autumn of 1900, which affected the rich as well as the 
poor." 

In dealing with the subject of the cost of the famine, 
the late Commission state that an unprecedented amount 
was spent on relief, and that the relief afforded was in 
many places too liberal. The enormous sum of ten 
crores of rupees was spent on famine relief alone, and, 
according to the estimate of the Commission, when the 
accounts are fully made up, and allowance is made for 
remission and advances of revenue, as well as for losses 
of revenue in other departments, it will be found that 
the late famine will have cost the state not less than 
fifteen crores of rupees, or ten million pounds sterling, 
s 6s 



IN FAMINE LAND 

or fifty million dollars. In the preceding famine the 
expenditure was less, and the mortality also was less, 
which may be accounted for by the fact, stated else- 
where, that the late famine struck a people already ex- 
hausted by a previous very severe famine and predis- 
posed to demoralization. 



VII 

RAJPUTANA 

"All her people sigh; they seek bread; they have given their 
pleasant things for meat." — Lamentations, i., ii, 

Rajputana is bounded on the west by Sind, on 
the north and east by the Punjab and the Northwest 
Provinces, on the northwest by Bahawalpur, and on the 
southeast and south by GwaHor and other native states. 
It has an area of 130,000 square miles, and is intersected 
by the Aravali mountains, which chain runs northeast 
and southwest. The most of the territory Hes north- 
west of these mountains, and is composed mostly of sandy, 
barren plains, which, in the extreme west, spread out 
into a great desert. In all this great northwest territory 
there is only one river, the Loni, which takes its rise in 
the Pushkar Valley, near Ajmir, and, flowing southwest, 
terminates in the Run of Cutch. Notwithstanding the 
barren nature of the country, there are some well-built 
and moderately prosperous towns, as Bikanir and 
Jodhpur. The country southeast of the Aravali moun- 
tains is more fertile. While there are hilly ranges and 
much rock, yet there are fertile valleys and table-lands, 
and there are the four rivers — Chambal, Banas, Sahar- 
mati, and Mahi. But Rajputana is a poorly watered 
country. In the western part the average rainfall is 
only about fourteen inches during the whole year, and 
at Bikanir the fall often does not exceed nine inches. 
At Jaipur it is twenty -four inches. Rajputana is a very 

67 



IN FAMINE LAND 

hot country, as there is so Httle moisture and there are 
such plains of sand absorbing and reflecting the burning 
rays of the sun during the day. But the difference be- 
tween the day and the night is very marked. 

In the northwestern part of Rajputana only one crop 
is raised annually, but in the other parts they gather 
two crops. The principal crops grown are millets, 
wheat, barley, maize, opium, oil seeds, also sugar-cane 
and cotton. In the more barren parts camels, cattle, 
and sheep are raised. Bikanir is famous for its camels 
and cattle. Salt and opium are articles of commerce. 
The main body of the people cultivate the soil, but the 
Marwari business-men — bankers and money-lenders — 
are famous throughout India. The population of this 
apparently barren and sandy country was, in 1891, 
12,300,150; but the census taken in March, 1901, 
shows that there has been a decrease in the population 
during the last decade of 2,175,000, which must be 
largely accounted for by the awful and prolonged 
famine through which it has passed. 

Towards the centre of Rajputana lies the British 
district of Ajmir-Merwara, the capital of which is Ajmir, 
a city of about fifty thousand inhabitants. The rest 
of Rajputana is divided into twenty feudatory states, of 
which Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, and Bikanir are the 
largest. The leading classes in Rajputana are Rajputs 
(480,000, in 1881); Brahmins (901,000); Mahajans, or 
bankers (634,000); Chamars (567,000); Minnas (428,- 
000); Gujars (403,000); Jats (426,000); and Ahirs, or 
cow-herds (131,000). 

The political status allowed to these native states, in 
keeping with the policy of the imperial government 
throughout the empire in its dealing with native pro- 
tected states, is that of semi-independence. As has 
been said: "Under Lord Canning the existence of 

68 




^ ..-^ 



IN FAMINE LAND 

native states was guaranteed, and the right of adoption 
was conceded. Even great crimes on the part of princes 
do not now lead to the annexation of their territories." 
At a pubUc dinner in Calcutta, Lord Lansdowne said: 

" I regard it as a matter of first-rate importance that 
the states in subordinate alliance with her Majesty 
should be governed in such manner that we need have 
no scruple in preserving for them the measure of in- 
dependence which they at present enjoy. Not only 
would it be an act of injustice to deprive them of the 
privileges of self-government to which they are entitled, 
but it would, I am convinced, be a distinct misfortune 
to the empire if these interesting remnants of indig- 
enous rule were to be entirely effaced. They may not 
all of them be governed entirely in accordance with our 
ideas of good government, but it is a question whether, 
in spite of this, they do not, from their point of view, 
prefer to remain under their own rulers, even if they are 
denied some of the administrative luxuries which we 
provide for the people of British India. Be this as it 
may, the territory directly under the government of 
India is already so large, and our tendency to govern it 
in accordance with uniform principles and according 
to stereotyped methods of administration is so strong, 
that from our point of view I should regard with un- 
feigned regret any events which might force us to assume 
responsibility of any part of the large areas at present 
governed by Indian chiefs and rulers. It is instructive, 
both for the natives of this country and for Europeans, 
that the two kinds of government should be in force 
side by side, and in the full view of public opinion." 

There are three things which caused the famine in 
Rajputana to be particularly severe — viz., first, the 

69 



IN FAMINE LAND 

character of the country itself, being so sandy — a "dry 
and thirsty land, where no water is" — and for the most 
part producing but one crop a year ; and, secondly, a 
succession of bad seasons had followed each other from 
1897, in which year the people suffered terribly; and, 
thirdly, indifference and lack of enterprise, in some places, 
on the part of the native rulers. In most places in Rajpu- 
tana very great jealousy of foreign enterprise exists. 
There is but little encouragement given to the develop- 
ment of industries, either on the part of outsiders, who 
would bring in capital and establish various forms of 
industry, or on the part of indigenous native capitalists. 
I myself tried in at least four of the larger states to 
start some industrial work, but was politely told that 
the rules would not admit of it. In one instance I 
was informed that "the novelty and permanent char- 
acter of the proposed institution" (an industrial school 
where som^e famine waifs could be taught weaving) * ' have 
deterred the Durbar from sanctioning the application"; 
and, after thanking the committee for their benevolent 
aid during the famine, the reply to my application 
concluded by saying: "As for the future, the Durbar is 
not prepared to intrust the m.aintenance of the famine 
waifs to any foreign committee, and hence the establish- 
ment of a permanent institution of this nature in the 
country seems unnecessary." And this, too, where the 
people were then dying off by the hundreds through 
starvation and disease, and when our committee had 
kept thousands more alive for months with the Christian 
Herald corn and blankets, 200 bags of grain and many 
blankets having been distributed to the hungry and 
naked at the very place where the committee desired 
to continue their benevolent work. This is given here 
merely to show how difficult it is at such times for 
native rulers to grasp the situation and in every way 

7Q 



IN FAMINE LAND 

possible save their people. The Viceroy himself address- 
ed the native chiefs upon the matter of caring for their 
subjects, and it is a matter of history that Lord George 
Hamilton, the Secretary for India, speaking in the House 
of Commons, said that the Viceroy was sending British 
officers into the states governed by native rulers, to aid 
them in inaugurating relief measures. In former fam- 
ines these rulers had done next to nothing to save their 
people from dying of starvation; but now, stirred up 
by the example of the British government, they were 
desirous of relieving the suffering, but needed help in 
organizing. The officers who have had experience are, 
therefore, placed at their service, and are giving valuable 
aid. The condition of the people in these native states 
is appalling. The news has reached them of the relief 
that is being afforded in British India, and large numbers 
of emaciated creatures are being met on all the roads 
leading thither. They leave behind them a ghastly 
trail of the corpses of those who have perished by the 
way, many of the people not having started imtil 
starvation had impaired their strength. 

Rev. E. S. Hume, Convener of the Interdenominational 
Famine Committee, stated, while the famine was raging: 

"Distress is greatest in the native states, where, on 
account of their independence, British control is least, 
and where native rulers are more indifferent to human 
life. There are 688 native states, and more than five 
hundred of these are in the famine district, and about 
half of them are in the Bombay Presidency." 

A "Political Recluse," in his Letters to an Indian 
Rajah,^ thus speaks of some of the obstacles to reform 

^ Letters to an Indian Rajah, p. 49. 
71 



IN FAMINE LAND 

in the native states: "The fact is, the princes are, after 
all, individuals, and are not only subject to the unwhole- 
some influences of their early training, but in the absence 
of any system are helplessly in the hands of their sur- 
roundings. Now these surroundings consist of vest- 
ed interests of all kinds, in whose eyes the one merit on 
which the existence of the state rests is indiscriminate 
charity to idlers of all sorts, and indulgence to the privi- 
leged and official classes ; and the one sin is strictness in 
the expenditure of the taxes or justice to the toiling ryot. 
In such a situation zeal for reform and love of economy 
cannot be expected to flourish, nor can any reforms, if 
introduced by a strong-willed ruler, be trusted to be safely 
carried out for the time or continued by a successor." 

There is no doubt that an Indian rajah's greatest foes 
are " those of his own household." Those who surround 
him daily, low servants and attendants, male and female, 
vile flatterers and panegyrists, humor his caprices and 
encourage him in indolence and vice. Prevailing polyg- 
amy leads to constant feuds and intrigues, while ignorant 
officials furnish the rajah with opinions, if not with 
brains, and help to bring about and perpetuate bad 
government. " It is a matter of history," says the late 
principal of Rajkumar College, Rajkot, "that connected 
with nearly every Durbar are persons, generally the 
most influential, who hope to increase their own influ- 
ence in proportion as their chief's capacity is diminished," 

The main defect in feudatory state administration 
in famine time is apathy. This apathy, or indifference, 
was observable in many places, but it was scandalous 
in at least two places — viz., in Indore, or Holkar's 
Dominions, in Central India, and in Bundi, a native 
state in the southeastern part of Rajputana. In the 
first case it seems to have been largely the fault of the 
maharajah, who was apparently indifferent to the suf- 

72 



IN FAMINE LAND 

ferings of his people. A report of the matter states: 
"The council unanimously adopted all the suggestions 
made by the British Resident, particularly in respect 
of relief measures in Indore territory, in Malwa and 
Bhopawn, where the distress was very acute in January, 
1900; but the maharajah turned a deaf ear to his 
councillors and equally to the Resident. On February 
5th the minister reported to the latter that the council 
could do nothing, as his Highness absoltitely refused to 
sanction expenditure, and had peremptorily ordered the 
stoppage of all famine relief, together with the immediate 
refund of advances in cash already miade, and had 
further declined to permit any suspension of revenue. 
This was at the very time that hundreds of the maha- 
rajah 's subjects were declared by his own officials to be 
starving, the deaths in Rampur and Bhanpura exceed- 
ing thirty a day. The state was not in an impoverished 
condition, for there were several crores of rupees in the 
treasury, but the council could not touch an anna with- 
out orders from the maharajah. It looked as if extreme 
measures would have to be taken, but at length his 
Highness yielded reluctantly to the pressure put upon 
him. But the mischief had been done, and many hun- 
dreds of persons perished before relief could reach them." 
In the case of Bundi, both rajah and council seem to 
have been criminally negligent, for, in January, tqoo, 
the agent to the Governor-General in Rajputana reported 
to government that when he found that nothing was 
being done to save the people, he wrote to the rajah, 
urging upon him the necessity of adopting "more com- 
prehensive and liberal measures than those hitherto 
contemplated for the relief of his distressed subjects." 
But after waiting three months, with death in the 
mean time playing havoc among the people, the agent 
wrote again that "The Bundi Durbar are slack and 

73 



IN FAMINE LAND 

apathetic, and still quite fail to realize their respon- 
sibility, they regard the mortality as inevitable, the 
result of a natural visitation which they are unable 
to encounter." What was the result? The people 
starved to death by the hundreds. The census showed 
that in the ten years, 1891 to 1901, the population of 
Bundi had decreased forty -two per cent. — in other 
words, that nearly half the population had disappeared. 
Making all due allowance for emigration, it is difficult 
to resist the conclusion that famine mainly accounted 
for the decrease of 124,400 in this period, and that the 
culpable neglect of duty on the part of the chief and his 
Durbar had much to say to the mortality which un- 
questionably occurred. 

Concerning the conduct of famine relief in native 
states, the Viceroy has publicly stated : 

" In a few native states the duty, of succoring their 
subjects had been so neglected by the Durbars as to 
need strong interference, and in others the good inten- 
tions of the rulers were frustrated by the dishonesty 
and peculation of subordinate officials, who could not 
resist turning even the starvation of their fellow-creatures 
to their own profit. In the majority of cases the chiefs 
have shown the most laudable disposition to adopt 
our methods of relief, so far as the resources and agency 
at their command have permitted. In some of the 
Rajputana states, especially Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikanir. 
and Kishangarh, arrangements, admirably planned and 
carried out by the rulers themselves, aroused the ad- 
miration of persons familiar with the famine system of 
British provinces." 

The late famine was largely a famin'fe of the native 
states. Of the sixty millions seriously affected, fully 

74 




FAMINE-STRICKEN 



IN FAMINE LAND 

thirty-five millions were the subjects of feudatory states. 
Compared with the great famine from which many of 
the places were not yet recovered, the tendency was for 
the centre of gravity to shift more to the west. Roughly 
speaking, it may be said that all the native states with- 
in the territory embraced by the Sutlej, Jumna, and 
Nerbudda rivers endured this awful visitation. It made 
the suffering all the worse, for the standard of relief in 
native states was far below that given in British 
territory, and it was the policy of the imperial govern- 
ment to allow the various feudatory states to initiate 
and conduct their own famine relief. Concerning the 
difference in the standard of relief adopted in the re- 
spective areas, it has been stated: "In Bikanir and 
Jodhpur the numbers relieved in any month never 
exceeded six per cent, of the nominal population, while 
in the British districts of Ajmir - Merwara twenty-five 
per cent, of the population were for months on relief. 
Even in the states under the Bombay government, in 
which, for various reasons, the initiative and supervision 
of the political officers were more in evidence than in 
central India and Rajputana, the scale of relief was very 
different from that in Gujarat. In Kathiawar the 
numbers on relief never exceeded thirteen per cent, of 
the population. In Palanpur they reached, but did not 
exceed, fifteen per cent, in one month alone. In the 
same month (July, 1900) one -third of the aggregate 
population of the four distressed districts of Gujarat 
was on relief. The two great states of Baroda and 
Hyderabad flank the Bombay territory on the north and 
east. In Hyderabad and Baroda the numbers on relief 
never rose to five per cent, of the nominal population; 
and yet both states were visited by drought and famine 
not less severely than the adjoining districts of the 
Bombay Presidency. Meanwhile, the difference in the 

75 



IN FAMINE LAND 

standards of relief was further testified by the eagerness 
with which thousands of fugitives streamed across the 
border from native states into British territory, where 
they passed themselves off as British subjects, in hope 
of enjoying the superior wages and comforts of our 
relief works, our poor-houses, and our hospitals," 



VIII 

TREKKING 
'He wandereth abroad for bread." — Job, xv., 23. 

The physical conditions in Rajputana are such that 
when famine begins it does its work quickly, and the 
poor people must either have relief brought to them 
without delay or they must leave their villages and 
trek away in search of it, or remain at home and die. 
It more often occurs that hunger drives them out and 
away, never to return. The great, sandy plains of 
Marwar and Bikanir furnish but scanty food in the best 
of years, but in famine time there is literally nothing 
left but sand. In Rajputana nature is either very kind 
or exceedingly rough. In ordinary years the soil, which 
seems to be nothing but sand, produces, with but very 
little labor, enough for the frugal Rajput Marwari to 
live upon. Cattle and sheep and goats abound. There 
are no rivers or canals, but wells are sunk and give 
enough water for ordinary purposes. In the hilly parts 
artificial dams are made, which store surplus water from 
the rains and which fertilize the valleys below. Nine 
inches of rain at Bikanir produces the annual crop 
upon which the people subsist. But in famine times all 
is changed. The rain never fell in parts of Rajputana 
for three years. The wells soon became dry. Green 
fields became barren plains of drifting, blinding sand, 
reflecting the torrid rays of the pitiless sun. Day after 
day the condition of the poor villager became worse. 

77 



IN FAMINE LAND 

His little store soon became exhausted. Remote from 
city and railway, and often out of the sphere of famine 
relief, when the worst came, he must shift for him- 
self. Patient and stolid fatalist that he is, a believer in 
Maya, and Karam, and Awagawan, in delusion, fate, 
and transmigration — his gnawing hunger and the awful 
sufferings of his family insist upon his being practical 
and looking about for food.^ 

As has already been pointed out, he believes that his 
only hope is in migrating; and so he gathers all to- 
gether, his family and his cattle, and starts off in search 
of food and water. A number of villagers have united, 
and they move slowly onward, each night sleeping 
under the open sky, in the field or at the road - side, 
wherever they happen to be when night overtakes them. 
They plod on through the broiling sun, each day be- 
coming weaker and fewer in number, with little hope 
of finding food for man or beast. The vulture and the 
hide and bone dealer follow and make much profit. 

On the Brindaban road I met a more fortunate com- 
pany, which had travelled all the way from Bikanir 
state thus far on their journey in quest of food and 
work. There were several hundreds of them. They 
had brought all they possessed in the world along with 
them, and had been travelling for several months. They 
only had a few cattle with them, and the men and women 
were carrying their earthly goods — a few bundles of 
clothing, some pots and vessels, rude stone grinding- 
mills, and boxes, bags, ropes, strings, and other mis- 
cellaneous small articles which they had saved from 

* The Report of the late Famine Commission (1901) says that " In 
certain states the faikire of the water-supply left no alternative but 
emigration," and in some cases the inadequacy of native relief and 
the liberality of British help proved a strong incentive to leave home 
and run the risk of dying on the way. 

78 




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IN FAMINE LAND 

the wreck. Little children were either running along 
by the mother's side or were being carried on tired 
shoulders. They were a sad, forlorn, silent company 
of wanderers. They were in search of food. They had 
left houses and lands, homes and associations, to go out 
into a land that they knew not of. I asked them where 
they came from and they said " Bikanir." And whither 
going? " In search of food and work." And where did 
they expect to find it? "Where God shows." And 
they were moving on and on. Some of these lived to 
get back to their wrecked homes, for the state, ill 
affording to lose its subjects when none too thickly 
populated at best, sent for them and other wanderers, 
and carried them back in a special train. But, alas, for 
those who wandered away into central India and into 
Gujarat! 

The villager's knowledge of geography is limited. His 
attachment to his own vine and fig-tree is strong. It 
is only when the vine and fig-tree wither and he can get 
neither cash, kind, nor credit, when his cattle are lowing 
for food and his little ones crying for bread, that he 
thinks of leaving the old home to go out into a place 
that he knows not of, in obedience to a vague rumor that 
he will find something to take away the awful gnawing 
of hunger. But, as a rule, he is disappointed. Wrote 
a missionary from Gujarat: 

"More than a score have died in front of my house, 
and perhaps hundreds have died on the road- sides in 
the town. They came there from the native states, 
and by the time they get there are too far gone to work, 
and lie down to die. One old woman, with her four 
sons, three grandchildren, and two daughters-in-law, 
came from a long distance, hoping to get relief in some 
way, and failing to find work, and worn and weakened 

79 



IN FAMINE LAND 

by the journey, became hopeless, and one after another 
died, till all her sons and their wives and two of the 
children had died, and the poor old woman was sent 
back with one grandchild to her country. 

" This is only one of many instances of the sights that 
came to the notice of our missionaries. The living, 
dying, and the dead skeletons are multiplying on all 
sides now, and only God will ever fully comprehend 
what the suffering of the next months will be." 

In like manner, Rev. C. B. Newton, of the Presbyterian 
Mission at Jalandhar City, north India, wrote: "Hun- 
dreds of people have been coming into our northern 
province from central India and Rajputana for two 
months past. They report an absolute failure of the 
crops there and the most utter destitution. There are 
many women and children among them, all looking 
terribly hungry. These gaunt refugees fill our streets, 
and their piteous cries can be heard night and day. 
Our difficulties are increased by the rise in the price 
of food. The rates are now as high as they were in 
1897, when the famine was most severe." And so Dr. 
Klopsch witnessed during his tour in Gujarat. He says : 
"After early lunch and family prayers at the house of 
Rev. T. M. Hudson, we left Baroda, travelling eastward, 
witnessing a succession of scenes of siiffering, desolation, 
and misery. The rivers were dried up, and along their 
sun - baked, kiln - dried beds, countless thousands of 
ragged, haggard, foot-sore beggars wandered aimlessly. 
They were bound they knew not whither. How many 
of them reached anywhere alive, God only knows. They 
were literally walking skeletons. They frequently died 
in their tracks. Thirty left a village for the relief works. 
Ten died while there. Ten died on the road, homeward 
bound. Ten are awaiting death in the village to which 

80 



IN FAMINE LAND 

they returned. These wanderers sink by the way-side 
from absolute exhaustion. Then, if near a village, they 
are picked up and carted to the hospital. They arrive 
unconscious, but their sunken eyes, heaving chests, and 
hollow stomachs tell their own terrible story of incon- 
ceivable torture. Two girls were thus picked up. They 
retained consciousness, but speech had become painful. 
They were offered food. 'Sahib,' said the elder girl, 
' we have not eaten for four days. If we take food now 
we shall die. Let us rest until evening and then feed 
us.' She died that day. The tissues and glands of 
her stomach were completely withered away. Truly, 
the present India famine is the most appalling tragedy 
the world has ever witnessed." 

Mr. Karmarkher, of Ahmadnagar, thus wrote of the 
condition of the farmers : 

" For months they have been away from home. Their 
cattle were all sold off for a song at the beginning of 
the famine. Their farming implements and rude equip- 
ments were all disposed of when they first left home. 
Their household goods, their ornaments, cooking utensils, 
even their personal clothing, have all, one after the other, 
been exchanged for food. The very houses they lived 
in have been molested by straggling robbers, who have 
torn away parts of the roof, or dragged off doors and 
other wood-work, and in many cases left the house quite 
uninhabitable. At the relief camps these farmers and 
laborers have earned a bare pittance, and managed to 
keep soul and body together. Some have lost their 
children in these camps, others have lost husbands, 
fathers, brothers, wives, or sisters, and are reduced 
sadly in strength by extreme exposure, unrelenting 
toil, and insufficient food. Few have little hope left 
for anything. Now, what will these people in this 
6 8i 



IN FAMINE LAND 

condition, returning to their former places and work, 
do? 

" To begin with, what will they live on? What have 
the farmers left to prepare the soil with ? No cattle ; not 
even the members of the family number the same as 
when they left. What will they sow the ground with? 
There is no seed; certainly no money to purchase it 
with ; money-lenders will not heed their cries ; they have 
nothing to pawn ; they are stripped to the skin, and will 
be helpless as their own six months' old babes. Further- 
more, from ploughing and sowing to the time of reap- 
ing three months must pass. They have nothing with 
which to pay day-laborers ; if they have to wait for rain, 
their wells are dry, and would be of little use. It will 
be a situation little short of despair. If the ploughing 
and sowing and harvest are interrupted, the famine goes 
on unmolested, and only increasing ; a country like this, 
with these months of famine followed by a delayed 
harvest, will be a doomed land. As one remarked, there 
would be little left to do except for each one to dig his 
own grave or to touch the torch to his funeral pile." 

The late Famine Commission state that " all who died 
in British districts were not British subjects. Very 
many were immigrants from native states who came 
across the border in a deplorable condition." They 
estimate that about a quarter of a million of these died 
on British soil. "We have come," they say, "to the 
general conclusion that immigration was undoubtedly 
very extensive, that it hampered the British administra- 
tion, and that it greatly affected the mortality." For 
the future, they " strongly recommend that the following 
ends should be carefully kept in view and enforced by 
British officers on frontier districts — namely, (a) the 
identification of immigrants; (6) their collection into 

82 



IN FAMINE LAND 

gangs or bodies ; and (c) the transfer of these bodies to 
the care of the states to which they belong." This 
policy may be just enough, but God pity the immigrants 
thus sent back to that condition of things from which 
they have fled in utter dispair ! 



THE BHILS 

"The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap; 
The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep; 
The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread — 
Have faded away, like the grass that we tread." 

If you are in Ajmir, and pay a visit to that beautiful 
building, the Mayo College, established for the education 
of the young nobles of Rajputana, and enter the .spacious 
hall from the front, you will see before you the crest of 
the institution, upon which is inscribed the appropriate 
motto, "Let there be light." Upon this crest also is 
the figure of a man of rough, sturdy appearance, with 
dishevelled hair and scanty, coarse garments, and hold- 
ing in his hand and upon his arm the symbols of his clan 
— the bow and shield. He is a Bhil — the aborigine of 
Rajputana. Although rude in appearance, and ruder 
still in habits of life, yet he is held in great esteem, as 
belonging to an ancient family, and at the coronation 
of the highest Rajput chiefs, in those states where he 
has his home, the ceremony is not complete until the 
head of the Bhil clan has impressed upon the forehead 
the sacred mark of kingship, and until this has been done 
the Bhils refuse to pay homage to him as their king.^ 
These Bhils are found especially at Khandesh, in the 
Bombay Presidency, and in Gujarat, and in the hill 

* Colonel Todd's Annals, vol. ii., p. 1368. 
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IN FAMINE LAND 

country of Rajputana. "The Bhils," writes the Rev. 
C. H. Gill, Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, 
"live a hand-to-mouth existence in their own hilly 
country in Rajputana, Gujarat, and central India. The 
population is sparse, and their villages, or pals, are 
spread over large areas. No house is nearer than an 
arrow's shoot from its neighbor. They all carry bows 
and arrows, as an Englishman carries his walking-stick, 
and they are fond of fighting. They set no value on 
human life, and scorn the pain of an arrow wound ; but 
it is strange how they will run away from the sight of a 
surgeon's lancet. For their mutual protection and 
safety they keep their houses far enough apart to enjoy 
an artillery duel of arrows between them." 

For the first time in many years famine came upon 
this hardy, brave, and primitive people. There were 
more than three hundred thousand of them, but nearly 
half have been carried off by famine. One reason for 
this great mortality lies in the fact that most of them 
live in jungles and in the mountains, in inaccessible 
places, remote from cities and railways, making it dif- 
ficult to reach them with relief. They are poorer also 
than others living in more favored parts, and con- 
sequently have less to fall back upon of what may be 
called "staying power." We have already seen some- 
thing of the suffering and mortality in the Bombay 
Presidency and in Gujarat. 

In 1 88 1, Charles Steward Thompson was appointed 
by the Church Missionary Society to work among the 
Bhils in Kherwara, in Rajputana. He continued his 
indefatigable labors there till last year, when, all alone 
under a tree, far away from his own countrymen, in 
the midst of his work among the famine-stricken, he 
was struck down by cholera, and died before any one 
could reach him. Concerning the death of this good 

85 



IN FAMINE LAND 

man, the Rev. Arthur Outram, his colleague in the work, 
wrote, on May 20th, the day after his death: "Mr. 
Thompson has, indeed, given himself for the people 
he loved, and has died in harness, surrounded by faithful 
Bhil followers. He loved them and they loved him, 
and he has been true to them to the death, and they 
to him; for by this time I fear that Bhagwana, his 
faithful bearer and cook, must have passed away; for 
when I reached him, a little after midnight, he was almost 
past medical aid. He nursed Thompson up to the very 
end, and was seized himself the very hour Thompson 
died. Last evening (Saturday, May 19th)," continues 
Mr. Outram, " I received an urgent message by runners, 
saying Thompson was very ill, and was starting from 
Baulia on a charpoy (string cot). I had food, and rode 
off with medicines, etc., at ten o'clock, accompanied 
by two sawars, and reached Kanbai (Kalbay) at 1.15 
A.M. There I foimd the sad procession, and learned 
that poor Thompson had left Baulia at 3 a.m. the 
previous morning, in an endeavor to push through to 
Kherwara, or until I met him. But at Jhejudi, half- 
way between Baulia and Bilaria, he told the bearers to 
stop under a big tree, and there he peacefully passed 
away at noon, too weak to give any particular messages, 
simply sending loving salaams to us all. Bhagwana was 
then seized ; so the bearers brought the body and Bhag- 
wana right through to Kanbai, seventeen miles, and 
there I met the party. I at once had a grave dug on 
a hill opposite the Kanbai School, thinking that he 
would have liked, as it were, to be in sight of his own 
work, and we laid his body to rest." 

About the same time, Mr. Outram wrote to the Bom- 
bay Guardian, giving an account of Mr. Thompson's 
death, and acknowledging the receipt of money which 
had been forwarded for his famine work, and which 

86 



■■■'/ 







^^^i^iifeS'.^, *fei^; 



IN FAMINE LAND 

had arrived too late to reach him. In this he said: 
"The v/ork he has left now devolves upon me, in addition 
to my own. So now I have 5500 children, feeding twice 
daily, in fifteen centres in Gujarat (which was Mr. 
Thompson's work), and seven centres on the Udaipur 
side (of which I have had charge), the whole nearly 
contained in the area covered by an equilateral triangle 
with sixty-mile sides. I regret to say that cholera is 
raging throughout the coimtry, greatly increasing our 
difficulties. In one of the centres alone eighty children 
died last week." 

A gathering of missionaries of the Punjab Church 
Missionary Society met at Amritsar on the 30th of May, 
1900, to consider "how best they could lend a hand to 
their overtaxed brethren, a thousand miles to the south, 
as they wrestled in unequal conflict with famine and 
disease." The object was to support and supplement 
existing work rather than to inaugurate any fresh work 
of their own. Mr. Thompson having died, the first 
question to be settled was, who is to carry on the relief 
work in the centres under his charge ? Later on, death 
claimed its tribute alike from the Scottish United Pres- 
byterian Mission in Rajputana and the Irish Presby- 
terian Mission in Gujarat. Was there any way in which 
the Punjab could go to the rescue there also? "We 
have," states the report of the committee, " merely acted 
as auxiliaries, not as an independent force. Any work, 
therefore, that our volunteers have effected implies a 
previous wealth of effort on the part of those who were 
on the spot from the beginning, and who, in some cases, 
began their struggle with the famine as early as last 
February. In like manner, as regards actual funds, 
even the workers who went from us have received the 
main portion of their financial support from those under 
whose immediate guidance they are working, leaving 

87 



IN FAMINE LAND 

US free to supplement this, or other relief work, as we 
saw opportunity. 

To begin, now, with the C. M. S. Bhil Mission, lying 
almost entirely in native states. Until Mr. Thompson's 
death, he was working alone on the Gujarat side, and 
Mr, and Mrs. Outram alone in the Rajputana portion. 
Mr. Thompson's death was the signal for reinforcements. 
The first volunteers to arrive were from the Northwest 
Provinces — the Rev. Foss Westcott, of the S. P. G,, to 
assist Mr. and Mrs. Outram, the Rev. E. P. Herbert and 
Mr. J. C. Harrison for the Gujarat work, which was the 
heavier of the two on this side. They had six different 
stations, and were feeding 6000 people daily, and their 
appeal for further reinforcements gave the Punjab the 
opportunity for taking its share in the up-hill battle. 
Altogether, a complete eleven of Punjabis spent some 
time at work, either in the C. M. S. Bhil Mission itself 
or with its next-door neighbor, the Rev. T. S. Stevenson, 
of the Irish Presbyterian Mission, at Parantij. Others 
also offered, but attained not into the first eleven. The 
first to start were Dr. and Mrs. Browne and the Rev. 
E. Rhodes, who reached the famine region about the 
middle of July. Leaving Mrs. Browne to give a helping 
hand at Parantij, the two men pushed on to Baulia and 
Bilaria, distant some twenty and forty miles, respective- 
ly, from the rail-head. They found Messrs. Herbert 
and Harrison bending under the strain of the work, and 
were speedily in the thick of it themselves. It is not 
necessary to repeat here the accounts of the revolting 
and heart-rending scenes they were continually called 
upon to witness. Suffice it to say that the labor of 
disposing of the dead proved almost equally heavy with 
that of feeding the living, while, over and above all 
other discomforts, an Egyptian plague of flies constantly 
threatened the health of the workers by bringing poUu- 




THE TREE UNDER WHICH THE REV. C. S. THOMPSON, C.M.S., DIED 



IN FAMINE LAND 

tion to their food from the foul and diseased masses of 
the people lying everyivhere around them. Water also 
was so scarce that at times, after all the dirty work of 
the day, the most that could be done, by way of a wash, 
was to dip the corner of a handkerchief in the drinking 
water and just moisten face and hands with it. Dr. 
Rhodes crossed over for a time to the Rajputana side 
to help Mr. Outram, but by the early part of September 
he was back again at Baulia, only now with an entirely 
fresh set of colleagues. It may literally be said that a 
whole country-side would have been entirely bereft of 
inhabitants but for the labors of the C. M. S. famine 
workers. On the Rajputana side, indeed, the British 
Resident at Kherwara was at work as well as the mis- 
sionaries, but on the Gujarat side the only other work 
attempted in our district was the feeding of fifty per- 
sons a day at Ghoradar by the Rao of Vijenagar. The 
Hindus of the neighboring country were supremely in- 
different to the sufferings of the Bhils; in fact, they 
thought it would be quite the best thing to allow such 
a nation of thieves to be depopulated to the furthest 
degree possible. And here came in the practical utility 
of mission work in preparing for a crisis like this. For 
not only did Mr. Thompson's village schools provide 
at once buildings for the storage and distribution of 
grain — natural centres of relief at distances of every ten 
miles, or thereabouts — but they also had created, among 
the teachers and older scholars, a workable subordinate 
staff, trained to some degree of discipline and some 
sense of responsibility and integrity. 

But it would have gone hardly, indeed, with our C. M. S. 
workers in the inaccessible isolation of Bhil-land had 
not the lines of communication been kept open with the 
utmost self-denial and kindliness by their warm-hearted 
Irish Presbyterian brethren at Ahmedabad and Parantij. 



IN FAMINE LAND 

At the former place Dr. and Mrs. Taylor, and at the 
latter the Rev. J. S. Stevenson, have vied with one 
another in their attentions to all who came and went, 
and Mrs. Taylor found time, in the midst of her own 
overwhelming labors, to turn her house into a temporary 
hospital for disabled workers from the front. This 
naturally leads us to speak of the Irish Presbyterian 
Mission as a whole, and of what we have been able 
to offer in return for their kindness. No mission has 
been smitten by the famine so severely as this one. No 
fewer than four missionaries, three men and a woman, 
have been called to lay down their lives in this labor of 
love after services ranging from three to thirty-two years. 
It was after the death of one of these. Dr. R. B. Mc- 
Whinney, of south Rampur, in Panch Mahals, that his 
colleague, Mr. William Mulligan, of Jhalod, wrote to the 
Punjab committee, asking whether they could send re- 
inforcements to supply his place and continue his min- 
istry to over seven hundred widows and orphans who 
had been dependent upon him. A party of four was 
made up without delay, and proceeded to Jhalod. The 
very first thing they had to do was to minister to Mr. 
Mulligan himself in his own fatal illness. 

On the 14th of August, 1900, Mr. William Mulligan, 
the first missionary of the Irish Presbyterian Jimgle 
Tribe's Mission, in the Panch Mahals, died of typhoid 
fever, supervening on cholera, while in the midst of his 
work. He was an indefatigable worker. It was he who 
related the pathetic story of the Bhil " Dudo" in the 
Bombay Guardian, as follows: "I met Dudo Punja 
sitting in the shade of the single post which remained of 
what, six months ago, had been his snug little cottage. 
Twenty-one years of age, he ought to have been in full 
vigor, but he was dying: the swollen legs, the sallow, 
bloodless skin, his listless, hopeless, and lifeless manner, 

90 



IN FAMINE LAND 

the heavy breathing, and glaring eye, told of hunger 
and cold endured. Beside him squatted two little 
children, who fled as I approached; but Dudo did not 
rise, because he could not. The children were nephews, 
whose parents were at the relief works. My questions 
were answered by whispers, and I got off my pony and 
stooped down to catch what he said. 

"'Are you hungry?' 

"'Yes, very hungry, and my throat is dry and sore.' 

"'I will send you food presently.' 

"'Do, send it quickly.' 

"I knew I should be late in getting home, so had 
some biscuits in my pocket for lunch; these I shared 
with Dudo and his nephews, and rode on to arrange for 
food for him and many others as well. After visiting 
another village, I galloped up to one of our district 
boarding schools, or children's kitchens, as the food was 
being prepared for the morning meal. 

'"Do you know Dudo Punja?' I said to the teacher. 

"'Yes, very well.' 

"'He's dying on the other side of the river yonder.' 

" ' Yes, sir, I will send.' So he said, but I saw it in his 
eyes that he would not trust so urgent a message to 
another. . . . 

"Yesterday I saw him again, and asked, 'What of 
Dudo?' 

"'I was too late; he was dead before I reached him; 
but I arranged to get him buried.' 

" Dudo's last words to me, and possibly to any one, 
were, ' Send food quickly.' Thadra's report was, ' I was 
too late.' One knows by the woodman's marks on the 
trees which are doomed, and we, through grim experience, 
have come to recognize the marks of the dread 'cutter 
down.' For many around us it is already too late. 
They may live a few days longer if well nursed, but 

91 



IN FAMINE LAND 

death is stamped on their faces ; they number hundreds. 
The looks of many others suggest Dudo's last words, 
'Send food quickly.' They number thousands." 

Mr. Blair has written of Mr. Mulligan's life and death, 
as follows: 

"The people around Jhalod are principally Bhils, and 
dependent altogether on the produce of their fields, so, 
when no crop came, there was nothing for these poor 
people but to die of starvation. 

"Mr. Mulligan, recognizing the immensity of the 
danger, threw his whole strength into the work of com- 
bating the terrible evil. He labored with almost super- 
human effort. Night and day he was busy in his efforts 
to save those perishing with hunger. From the scenes 
described by him, in the pages of the Bombay Guardian, 
its readers will know something of the amount of work 
performed by Mr. Mulligan, and of the terrible strain 
all this must have entailed upon him. For some months 
he was in charge of the government poor - house in 
Jhalod. He rescued hundreds of famine waifs, and fed 
thousands of people who but for him would in all prob- 
ability have died. 

"On July 15th he received a message to the effect 
that Mr. McWhinney was seriously ill in south Rampur. 
He immediately set off on that weary ride of twenty 
miles to Rampur, arriving only in time to find that Mr. 
McWhinney had gone home. When the remains of our 
brother had been committed to their last resting-place 
in that far-away grave in Rampur, Mr. Mulligan returned 
to Jhalod. Shortly after he was attacked with cholera. 
This was followed by an attack of typhoid fever, which 
ended fatally, and our brother fell asleep in Jesus on 
Tuesday night, the 14th of August, about eight o'clock. 
He died, another victim to overwork. With him duty 

92 



IN FAMINE LAND 

was paramount. He counted not his life dear unto him- 
self in order that he might finish his course with joy." 

It would be difficult to exaggerate the hardships of the 
workers among such classes of people and in such remote 
places. The Viceroy, Lord Curzon, in his great speech 
on the famine, delivered on the 19th of October, 1900, 
thus refers to the noble work done by famine relief 
officers and missionaries: 

" In a famine campaign, which has lasted so long and 
has provided so many opportunities for chivalry and 
self-sacrifice, it would not be difficult, but it might be 
invidious, to select any names for special mention. 
Numerous cases of devotion, amounting to loftiest hero- 
ism, have been brought under my notice. I have heard 
of Englishmen dying at their posts without a murmur. 
I have seen cases where the entire organization of a 
vast area and the lives of thousands of beings rested 
upon the shoulders of a single individual, laboring on 
in silence and solitude while his bodily strength was 
fast ebbing away. I have known of natives who, in- 
spired by this example, have thrown themselves with 
equal ardor into the struggle, and have unmurmuringly 
laid down their lives for their countrymen. Particularly 
must I mention the noble efforts of the missionary 
agencies of the various Christian denominations. If 
there ever was an occasion in which their local knowledge 
and influence were likely to be of value, and in which 
it was open to them to vindicate the highest standards 
of their beneficent calling, it was here; and strenuously 
and faithfully have they performed their task." 

In the previous January this generous-hearted Viceroy 
had said, before his council in Calcutta, that "to relieve 

93 



IN FAMINE LAND 

the Indian poor from starvation and to save their lives, 
British officers freely sacrificed their own. When I was 
at Jabalpur, and again at Nagpur, I saw the modest 
tombstones of English officers who had perished in the 
last famine of 1896-97. These men did not die on the 
battle-field. No decoration shone upon their breasts, 
no fanfare proclaimed their departure. They simply 
and silently laid down their lives, broken to pieces in 
the service of the poor and the suffering among the 
Indian people ; and not in this world, but in another, will 
they have their reward. Only last week there was 
admitted to a Calcutta hospital an English officer, 
shattered in health and paralyzed in his limbs, who had 
done nothing but wear himself out in famine work in the 
Central Provinces." 



X 

THROUGH FAMINE LAND 

"It has gnawed like a wolf at my heart, mother, 
A wolf that is fierce for blood; 
All the livelong day, and the night beside, 
Gnawing for lack of food." 

Bhartpur, Jaipur, Phalera, Kuchawan, Merta, Bi- 
kanir, Jodhpur, Biawar, Ajmir, Kishangarh, and many 
other places, and all between and around and beyond 
twenty states, and 12,000,000 people, helpless under 
this merciless, pitiless, cruel calamity. Strong men, 
sturdy descendants of Rajput warriors, grown feeble 
under the clutch of the unseen tyrant, their cattle dead 
and their children wasted away, sold their ploughs and 
hoes and brass drinking-pots, to buy a morsel of bread. 
Gaunt mothers, carrying, not on hip,^ but over shoulder, 
emaciated babies, plead, in the name of Heaven, for a 
few grains of corn. Oh, the mortality of the innocents! 
Children abandoned at the road-side, and the mother, 
half eaten of jackals, lying dead in the field. And that 
embodiment of avarice and greed, the bunya, sits in his 
shop door and rubs his greasy hands, and, immoved 
by the pitiful wailing around him, raises the price of 
grain, which, from more fortunate provinces, has sought 
through him a market. 

Sitting in front of the house, in the dusk of the evening, 

' It is customary for an Indian mother to cany her child astride 
of her hip. 

95 



.TN FAMINE LAND 

I heard the cry of a child — a child in distress. I waited, 
and listened. It was a child's voice pleading for food. 
I answered the voice, and bade it draw near ; and, out 
of the semi-darkness, to my feet came a waif, emaciated, 
hungry, and naked. When the boy had become calm, 
I said, "Who are you?" 

"AThakur." 

"What is your name?" 

"Rustam." 

"Well, Rustam, what do you want?" 

" I am starving." 

" Why do your parents not help you?" 

"They are dead." 

"When did they die?" 

"They starved to death at Abu Road."^ , 

"And have you no one?" 

"Only God." 

"And will you stay with me?" 

"Yes." 

And so, out of the precious fund, the child was saved. 

At many railway-stations I found miserable creatures 
soliciting alms from the passengers on the train. I did 
not observe many respond. I tried to give something 
to the children, but adults nearly always attempted to 
snatch it away from them. At one station, when about 
fifty beggars were pleading for help, I distributed five 
rupees to mothers with babies and to feeble old women, 
and, for the most part, ignored the men ; but the train 
had no sooner started than the men fought with the 
women to get the money away from them, and the last 
I saw was two men shaking a poor woman with a baby 
clinging to her shoulder, and another man throwing 
an aged woman down, to get the money. Alas! how 
brutalizing is poverty. 

I left Phalera at 1.15 in the morning, and, travelling 

96 



IN FAMINE LAND 

via Sambhar Lake Branch to Kuchaman Road, pro- 
ceeded thence 176 miles over the Jodhpur-Bikanir Rail- 
way, arriving at Bikanir at five o'clock in the evening. 
If sand had the commercial value of salt what endless 
riches could be gathered between Phalera and Bikanir. 
After leaving Merta Road, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. the 
train passes over one great sea of sand blown up in 
waves upon the vast barren plain, and burning under the 
fierce rays of the sim, while the air is full of fine particles, 
which penetrate everywhere. But, alas! this season 
there is no food, and out of this weary waste grows no 
green thing. There are, here and there, dry water- 
courses, but for three years there has been no running 
water in them. There are fields, but they are of sand; 
wells, but they have gone dry; villages, but without 
inhabitant; cattle, but in great bone-heaps at the side 
of the railway. I said to an official at Merta Road, 
' ' This famine will continue for two years. " " For ten, ' ' 
he replied. "Cattle dead, inhabitants wandered away, 
no grain for seed— the effect will be felt for ten years, 
and then it will be time for another." I am told that 
the famine of 1868 made a difference of more than a 
million in the population of Rajputana alone. 

I was awakened at daylight, long before I reached 
Merta Road, by the pathetic cry of poor, emaciated 
creatures who had crawled out of their villages to the 
railway-stations, begging for food ; and from there on to 
Bikanir, all day long, it was the same sad, bitter cry for 
bread — men who were proud of their manly Rajput 
forms feebly crawling to one's feet for food; women, 
not old in years, but prematurely old with starvation 
and sorrow; mothers not able to stand, with little 
skeleton babies ; children long since bereft of playfulness 
and laughter ; and on every face depicted a hopelessness, 
sadness, and gloom indicative of abandonment to the 
7 97 



IN FAMINE LAND 

insatiable demands of a cruel necessity. To many of 
these, relief works are no relief. They are too far away ; 
they are loath to leave their homes ; but, especially, they 
are too weak and feeble to work. The very old and 
very young, and the infirm and sick cannot earn any- 
thing on relief works. What will they do then? Die. 

There is another thing which will hasten this on. 
Cholera has broken out. Starvation is slow, and the 
helpless victims gradually waste away and die. But 
cholera does its work quickly. Seizing upon the famine- 
stricken, the acute agony is speedil}^ followed by in- 
evitable collapse, and almost certain death. At Nagaur, 
between Merta Road and Bikanir, as many as one 
hundred and fifty died in a day. The water they 
brought two miles for me to drink was of the color of 
beer and of an evil odor. Hunger and thirst drive the 
people to use imwholesome food and poisoned water, 
and, as a result, disease outruns starvation. 

At night a dinner was given to 125 hungry Christians. 
The food was a kind of mush made of rice and dal.'^ The 
whole, with six annas for water and eight annas for 
wood and the hire of the large iron caldron for cooking 
the mess, cost ten rupees, and all had enough to eat. 
The people seemed very grateful for the food, and joined 
heartily in the singing and prayers which preceded, 
and ended with repeated shouts of "Victory to Jesus!" 

The Rev. George Henderson, superintendent of the 
Seaman's Rest, Calcutta, made a tour in Rajputana, 
and wrote his experiences as follows : 

"Hearing that the famine in Rajputana was very 
severe, I decided to go and take a look at some of the 

* A kind of pulse, a common food of India. In many parts of 
India the millions live all the year round on dal bhat and chapaties, or 
pulse, rice, and unleavened, usually barley, cakes. 

98 



IN FAMINE LAND 

worst districts, and being advised by a friend that I 
must go off the hne of railway and away from the big 
towns in order to see it at its worst, I decided to take 
several bicycle trips into the country, in different direc- 
tions, to see the condition of the land, the people, and 
what was being done for their relief. Words almost 
fail to describe the distress among the poor people, and 
the very sight of the land is something long to be re- 
membered. Nothing describes it so well as to compare 
it to Gustave Dore's illustration of Dante's ' Inferno.' 
The land is bare and black, without a single green leaf 
of any kind, and the skeletons of cattle lying about the 
corners of the field. Several villages I visited were 
altogether deserted, except for two or three old people, 
who were waiting there to die. 

"Miles of land are going out of cultivation for want 
of rain and cattle to cultivate, and the only things left 
standing are the babul trees, and all the leaves have 
been taken off and the bark peeled off for the cat- 
tle, until now they look like the remains of an 
American forest after it has been swept by fire. The 
few cattle remaining are being used to bring out loads 
of hides, which is the only thing I saw being exported 
from the famine districts. Rajputana, where I saw it, 
is truly the 'land of the shadow of death,' and the 
effect of going along a road and meeting people starving 
and dying for want of food is very depressing. It 
relieves your feelings to give them something to eat, 
but it helps very little, and it is impossible to carry 
food even to relieve temporarily the dying people you 
meet. There is only one cry going up from the people, 
and that is, ' Hungry and dying ' ; and, as you look at 
them you wonder how they have managed to keep in 
life so long. They have, indeed, become such skeletons 
that they are horrible to behold. Most of the people 
LofC. 99 



IN FAMINE LAND 

you meet in the road hold up two fingers, to signify that 
there is only God and you. 

" I distributed the food I was carrying with me, as it 
relieved my feelings, but it did them very little good, 
for many of them with their last grains of flour have 
scraped the bark off the babul trees and make cakes of 
the bark and flour, which partly appeases the pangs 
of hunger, but is soon fatal to them, as it brings on the 
famine diarrhoea, which can only be overcome by 
nourishment and careful nursing. A few miles out from 
Nasirabad seven people had died and the police were 
bringing in the bodies ; and I had gone but a little farther 
when I spied some vultures at a feast a few yards from 
the road. I dismounted and walked to the spot, driving 
away the vultures and hoping that it would be a goat 
or buffalo, but found that it was a human being of full- 
grown size, and a very disgusting sight. Farther on I 
came to a man and woman trying to reach the relief 
works about a mile from them, and they were in the 
last stage of starvation, but the man was trying to 
encourage the woman, who had great difficulty in mov- 
ing slowly. A few miles farther on was a woman dead 
by the road-side, and many sights of that kind could be 
seen. After leaving Nasirabad, and from that on to 
eight miles beyond the town of Bundi, I did not see a 
single growing crop except in the bottom of two rivers, 
where they were growing some onions and melons, and 
they had dug a well in the river-bed to get water to 
irrigate their crops. The government have now taken 
things in hand and are making great provisions for the 
starving, about which I shall write you in my next." 

Miss Lillian Marks, of Ajmir, wrote in April, 1900: 

"Thus far God has provided funds to continue this 

100 



IN FAMINE LAND 

work, and we are asking Him with tears and sighs to 
open the hearts of His people still further, that they 
may take compassion on the starving people and on 
us who witness their misery but cannot relieve it with- 
out funds. 

"One of my friends, Mr. Inglis, of the Presbyterian 
Mission, has just returned from a journey of loo miles 
around this place. He says: 'I expected to see suf- 
fering, but it never entered my thought that I should 
ever witness the sights that have shocked me on this 
journey. I saw a boy dragging a skeleton of a man by 
the feet, that it might be burned instead of devoured 
by vultures or wild animals. I have seen dogs fighting 
over the body of a child by the way-side. I counted 
in one evening's journey forty dead bodies on the road, 
and the next day thirty- two, and the following day 
twenty-five. These had evidently tried to reach a relief 
camp, but had waited too long before setting out, and 
had died by the way. While sitting at tea with Dr. 
Huntly we clearly heard some one crying. We went 
out, and there were two little children standing, wailing. 
Their mother had left them there and had gone away. 
We gave them some food, and let them rest until we could 
decide what was the best way of providing for them. 
Having talked the matter over, we went out to them, 
and there, to our astonishment, were ten children. Other 
mothers, hearing what the first one had done, and seeing 
that her children had been fed, had brought their 
children, and had then run away. Only one returned, 
her maternal love compelling her to bid her offspring 
farewell. She begged us to keep them, and, though her 
heart was breaking at the parting, she was thankful 
that they, at least, would be fed. We gave her some 
food, too, which she devoured greedily, almost like an 
animal. Yet a very short time ago this woman was 

lOI 



IN FAMINE LAND 

well off, and was a respectable, well-behaved woman. 
Now she was almost naked, and ravenously hungry.' 

" I could readily credit such a narrative" [Miss Marks 
continues], " even if it had not been told me by a friend 
whose word I can rely on. Heart-rending cases have 
come under my own observation, which were worse than 
I have ever heard of in any former famine. Families 
setting out to seek food, and, being separated, too feeble 
to seek any child who might linger by the way. Terrible 
partings, when the father is the only one strong enough 
to undertake the journey; or, perhaps, taking one or 
two of his boys with him, the mother and the young 
girls left behind to starve. The aged, the crippled, and 
the blind die, of course. What can be done? There is 
no food for any one but those who can travel. Last 
night I found a boy about four years of age by the way- 
side. He looked so sad, and his little sunken cheeks and 
bright eyes told the now all too familiar story. ' Mera 
koi nahin hai' (I have not any one), he wailed, as he 
looked tearfully in my face. I asked him where was 
his mother. ' Dead,' he answered. His father? ' Gone 
a long way off."' 



XI 

CHOLERA 
"There is a Reaper, whose name is Death." — Longfellow. 

It is said that cobras always go in pairs. Certainly 
calamities never come singly. One evil follows another. 
Following in the wake of gaunt famine comes that 
awful Oriental epidemic, cholera. At such a time con- 
ditions and environments induce it. The system is ripe 
for it; and it claims its victims by the thousands. Re- 
lieving the famine- stricken is no easy task at any time, 
but when cholera appears the burden is intolerable. 
Relief camps are broken up, and thousands, forgetting 
their hunger, seek in flight immunity from a greater evil, 
only to fall victims at the way-side and spread the in- 
fection throughout the surrounding villages. Universal 
fear, a horrible feeling of helplessness and despair end- 
ing in apathy and indifference, seems to seize upon the 
miserable people. Officials double their diligence, and 
missionaries work and pray as never before. These are 
the days of heroism and self - f orgetfulness and faith- 
fulness to duty and unselfish service to helpless hu- 
manity. In South Africa men exposed themselves to 
Boer bullets and unflinchingly faced a hidden foe, en- 
during hardships which made the world wonder. Let 
us generously award them the Victoria Cross. But in 
India, without the "pomp of glorious war," or the hope 
of earthly promotion or reward, move, quietly and 
calmly, bands of noble men and women, seeking to 

103 



IN FAMINE LAND 

overcome a foe so wide-spread that fifty million people 
feel his power, and so intrenched that there is but 
little hope of speedy conquest. We knew the cholera 
was coming to Rajputana. 

The Rev. J. E. Robinson, editor of the Indian Witness, 
visited Godhra early in May, 1900, and wrote of what 
he saw as follows: 

" At Godhra, I found Rev. R. C. Ward in charge of the 
poor-house, with about seven hundred and fifty persons 
in all stages of emaciation and weakness. These are the 
old and infirm and children, unable to do even light 
work, which the government requires shall be done by 
all who are physically equal to it. It is impossible to 
exaggerate the condition and appearance of those who 
find their way into the poor-houses. Numbers. die on 
the way. Their strength is unequal to the journey. 
Straggling in from distant villages to the larger stations, 
where relief is provided by the government, large num- 
bers reach the poor-houses in the extreme of debility, 
incapable of assimilating food, and utterly devoid of 
strength to resist the attack of the first disease that lays 
hold on them. Poor wrecks are constantly added to the 
inmates by the police and the dhooli bearers, who pick 
them up on the road-sides and under trees and carry 
them to the poor-house. The impression made upon one 
by these living skeletons is harrowing. Nothing goes 
to one's heart so painfully as the sight of the little 
children, whose wasted bodies seem beyond all possi- 
bility of recuperation, no matter how carefully attended 
to. Mr. Ward gives hours daily to the work in the poor- 
house, seeking to infuse a kind, considerate spirit into the 
subordinates, and to render the unspeakably hard lot 
of the inmates as easy as possible. All that can be done 
in the face of difficulty and disadvantage to alleviate 

194 



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IN FAMINE LAND 

their sufferings and preserve their Hves is done. But 
the best efforts prove futile in numberless instances. 
At the time of my visit the terrible epidemic of cholera 
which broke out in the relief-works camp had added 
to the horrors of the situation at Godhra. Fourteen 
thousand starving people were employed in enlarging 
and deepening a tank at Godhra when cholera appeared 
among them. The camp was broken up. The un- 
happy creatures fled in every direction, hundreds of 
them, alas! to fall victims to this dread scourge before 
they had gone very far. The officials were not prepared 
to cope with such an emergency at the moment, and 
hundreds of corpses remained exposed for some days. 
A corps of dhooli bearers was organized to carry the 
offensive bodies to the places of burning, but in many 
instance the bearers themselves were taken with cholera, 
and lay down in the open beside the corpses they had 
been carrying, or near the burning-pit, soon to suc- 
cumb to the disease. Then a large number of carts was 
gathered, and the work of removal was facilitated. The 
bodies, mostly nude, were thrown in and carried off to 
the burning-pit, their arms and legs dangling over the 
ends of the carts, presenting a horrible spectacle. Fifteen 
hundred corpses were picked up and disposed of within 
a few days. In the cholera wards attached to the poor- 
house I saw several scores of people in all stages of 
cholera — men, women, and children — a large number 
of whom were dying daily. Five corpses lay among 
the sick and dying, waiting to be carried out to burn- 
ing. The genius of a Raphael or a Dore and the pen 
of a Dante would be needed to do justice to the fear- 
ful spectacle. It will never fade from memory. 

" A sad occurrence took place two days before my visit 
to Godhra. A public-works overseer had pitched his 
camp, constructed of bamboo mats, under a large ban- 



IN FAMINE LAND 

yan-tree, adjoining the mission compound. His wife and 
three children were with him. The wife was seized with 
cholera on Monday morning. The missionary's wife 
nursed her tenderly and did everything she could for her, 
but all in vain. Mrs. Cooper died in the evening. The 
missionary's wife's kind hands prepared the body for 
burial, and, coffined in quick-lime, it was borne to the 
cemetery, followed by the bereaved husband, the collec- 
tor of the district, and the missionary. Next day the 
husband and three motherless children proceeded to 
Baroda to relatives. Passing through Baroda, on Wed- 
nesday evening, I learned that Mr. Cooper had just died. 
Oh, the tragedies of Indian life! 

"To Mr. Ward's knowledge, five persons have died of 
cholera under the banyan - tree beneath which Mr. 
Cooper pitched his camp, Mrs. Cooper being the fifth. 
The missionary did a wise thing in burning up the whole 
camp paraphernalia that remained. 

" Being down to the railway-station, it was sad to see 
the surviving remnant of the fourteen thousand, who 
a few days previously had been engaged in the relief 
works, trying to make themselves comfortable in the 
open, with the blazing sun pouring its fierce rays upon 
them. God only knows what has become of hundreds 
of others who have wandered off, members of families 
separated, never to meet again, many to die in their 
tracks and to spread the fatal disease to far-distant 
villages." 

On May 28th Dr. Louis Klopsch had completed his 
tour of the famine districts in the Bombay Presidency, 
including the native states of Gujarat and Baroda. His 
investigation of the conditions in those sections was 
most thorough. Everywhere he was confronted with 
the most shocking and revolting scenes. He found the 

106 



IN FAMINE LAND 

famine camps stampeded by cholera and small-pox fu- 
gitives, who had come from distant points of infection. 
Many were dying in the fields and ditches and along 
the road-side. 

At Godhra, as has been related by Mr. J. E. Robinson, 
there were 3000 deaths from cholera in four days. 
Dr. Klopsch saw while there sixteen bodies incinerated, 
this method of disposing of the dead being general 
throughout the famine district. But in many places 
the cholera came on so suddenly and unexpectedly that 
there were no facilities for disposing of the dead in this 
manner. In fact, in some places the authorities were 
helpless, as all were in such a fright that no one would 
serve either to gather the stricken into hospitals or to 
dispose of the bodies of the dead. 

At Dohad, some fifty miles east of Godhra, he found 
a similar frightful condition of affairs, there having been 
2500 deaths from cholera. The air of the place was 
stifling and strongly impregnated with the frightful odor 
of hundreds of decaying bodies which lay about un- 
buried. The water was also impregnated with the 
poison from the carcasses, and everywhere the stench 
was indescribable and sickening. In the hospitals the 
death rate, as reported by the physicians, was ninety per 
cent. No language can adequately describe the terrible 
condition of affairs in this section of India. Of this 
dreadful condition of things Dr. Klopsch wrote: 

" One-half of India to-day is a great charnel-house, in 
which countless thousands have already perished of 
cholera, plague, dysentery, and starvation, and as many 
more are doomed to a like fate. How to describe it, 
so as to bring it within the grasp of the human mind, I 
know not. Twenty thousand cases of cholera weekly, 
with a seventy - five per cent, mortality, representing 

107 



IN FAMINE LAND 

15,000 deaths every seven days; plague on every hand; 
dysentery mowing down its victims right and left, and 
starvation staring millions boldly and defiantly in the 
face, reaping a harvest unprecedented — this tells the 
horrible story about as accurately as a brief prose 
summary of Milton's Paradise Lost would convey a 
sense of its poetic sublimity. The skeleton may be 
there, but the soul is wanting." 

It is painful even to write the history of those awful 
days. Conditions were ripe for such an epidemic. Often 
unwholesome food, impure water, unsanitary conditions, 
emaciated bodies, and exposure led to these sudden out- 
breaks. On the nth of May, Mr. J. H. McNeill, of the 
Jungle Tribes Mission, Dohad, Panch Mahals, wrote to 
a friend: 

"The one little ewe lamb of whom I wrote you some 
time ago has now multiplied to twenty-six. Three of 
these were brought from the side of their mother, lying 
just beyond our hedge. Seven have lost their parents 
by the cholera epidemic, which has been raging here for 
the past ten days and claiming its victims at the rate 
of forty per day. The epidemic broke out on the tank 
where 8000 people were at work. All who were able 
fled to their villages, taking the disease with them. 
Those not able to flee dropped where they were on the 
road, behind a tree or in a hole. Many made for our 
house, but had not strength enough to bring them 
the length, so perished before help could reach them. 
We kept our boys running with hot milk to them, and 
helping to succor those who had a little life left in them. 
The stench from dead and dying is awful. I could not 
tell you how many dead bodies were carried away from 
about our house, but on Saturday morning the 

108 



IN FAMINE LAND 

mamlatdar called to see me about nine o'clock, and 
told me that they had already collected 200 dead 
bodies that morning; that same day we had ten re- 
moved from about our house. 

" Last Sunday evening my wife and I went to see how 
a well, about one hundred yards from our house, was 
holding out. On looking in we were horrified to see 
two dead bodies lying — one on the last step down, the 
other in the bottom of the well, where there was not 
enough water to cover it. The people around were 
using the water, and never thinking of having the bodies 
removed. Needless to say, I had them removed and 
the well cleaned out. 

* ' We are besieged with people coming for medicine for 
some friend who has cholera. Those attacked die in 
four to six hours if not under treatment. Many drop 
down when speaking to their fellows or going along 
with their load. Oh, it is all so sad! It will be a relief 
to breathe fresh air again. Nowhere can we turn outside 
our compound without coming across dead bodies. It 
is sickening to see the bodies of little children being 
devoured by dogs. Had it not been for your timely 
help these twenty-six little ones might have shared the 
same fate. Could the generous donors see them now, 
washed, clothed, and fed, they would feel well repaid 
for all they have done to help poor, distracted India in 
her time of need. Surely God means good to the poor 
Bhils from all this. We hope to get a little breathing- 
space when the rains come and our people get settled 
down again. Last week we gave 475 meals per day to 
children under twelve years of age." 

Many pages might be filled with such pathetic stories 
and in recording the heroism of the famine workers. 
It is distressing enough to fight famine, but much more 

109 



IN FAMINE LAND 

terrible to face both famine and cholera, for one feels 
so utterly helpless in the presence of such an insidious 
and deadly foe. Cholera comes suddenly, does its work 
quickly, and is no respecter of persons. 

We in Rajputana knew cholera was at Khandwa, 
then had crept up to Indore and Nimach, and that the 
same causes would bring it to Nasirabad and Ajmir. 
Our famine waifs, gathered with so much diligence and 
difficulty and tended with so much consideration and 
care, would not be immune. And so the storm broke. 
Mr. Plomer wrote: "The anxious part of the famine 
has dawned upon us. Cholera, whose ravages have 
been heard of at Ujjain and Nimach, has appeared 
among us. Miss Marks has had a few cases; we have 
had four. Two have succumbed, one had to be sent 
away to the municipal camp, and one, who took ill last 
evening, has so far recovered as to be able to undertake 
his journey to a village near Phalera. I have been 
advised by the Civil Surgeon to put the boys, out for a 
time. All this will entail very great expense." And 
then from Miss Marks, on the 29th of April: "We were 
indeed glad to welcome Dr. Emma Scott this morning. 
She has all she can do. There have been nineteen 
deaths from cholera this week, and everything is in 
great confusion. To-day I move the women into camp, 
and on Monday the girls all go. We succeeded with 
great difficulty in getting a place, about two miles out, 
where there is a well. The matron of the Woman's 
Home died very suddenly last night. She was sick 
only a short time. As I write, a woman comes from 
one side to say a woman has just died, and a girl comes 
from the boarding-house to say a girl has died. You 
can imagine what all this means, especially this hot 
weather. Pray for us. 11 a.m. — two more new cholera 
cases," 

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IN FAMINE LAND 

From the 29th of April to the 26th of May, these elect 
ladies, Miss Marks, Miss Tryon, and Miss Scott, M.D., 
with their assistants, by turns remained with more 
than two hundred women and girls in the cholera camp, 
enduring the heat, patiently waiting upon the sick, 
caring for the dying, cheering the living, and guarding 
with their lives those whom Providence had put in their 
charge. On the nth of May, Miss Scott drove me out 
to the camp. I found several tents pitched under some 
mango-trees, and rows of booths made of sirki, or reed- 
grass, in which the missionaries and their proteges were 
living. The cook-room was under a tree. The dining- 
hall was the garden-path. Food was being prepared 
when I arrived. Cholera had abated, and the children 
seemed happy in their improvised home. Bu.t none can 
know the anxiety and care and planning and arranging 
and weary hours of toil required in meeting an emergency 
like this until they have had the experience. And yet 
there were compensations. How it brought out the 
noble, unselfish natures of some. How it led to self- 
sacrifice and true devotion. I was told that the matron 
who died ignored her own illness in the night because 
she did not wish to disturb those who needed rest, and 
that her last words were an exhortation to those over 
whom she had charge; that "heathen" servants volun- 
tarily devoted themselves to the care of the sick and 
were indispensable in the hour of the greatest need; 
that the most menial services were rendered by the 
most cultured and refined. And all came forth from 
this furnace of affliction refined, purified, and ennobled. 
On Sunday morning. May 27th, we all met for the first 
time in the beautiful stone church, just completed, and, 
crowding it to the doors, gave thanks to our Heavenly 
Father for His deliverance from famine and cholera. 
Here were assembled nearly four hundred men, women, 

III 



IN FAMINE LAND 

and children, nearly all of whom, six months ago, were 
wandering, starving and naked, in the villages, but now, 
fed, clothed, and sheltered, were surrounded with Chris- 
tian influences and under Christian training. And the 
faithful worker can look through his tears and feel that 
he is compensated. 



XII 

THE PLACE OF DEATH 

"Ak ra jopra, Pok ra bar, 
Bajra ra roti, Mot'h ra dal, 
Dekho ho, Raja, Teri Marwar." 

"Huts of the ak, barriers of thorns, 
Bread of maize, lentils of the vetch, 
Behold, rajah, your Marwar." 

— Rajputana Folk Song. 

"The black camel Death kneeleth once at each door. 
And a mortal must mount, to return never more." 

— Oriental Proverb. 

It sometimes occurs that sailors in distress at sea 
famish from thirst although surrounded with water; 
and in Rajputana a Hke state of things has existed, for 
grain poured into the country from the Northwest 
Provinces and elsewhere in such quantities that the 
railway companies and the hunyas have realized large 
profits, and wheat is on sale at ten seers to the rupee ; 
but as the poor peasant has no money, he must starve 
to death with food at his door. At many of the railway- 
stations I saw thousands of fat pigeons gorging them- 
selves with grain from the loaded wagons on the siding, 
while apathetic native officials stood by and saw the pre- 
cious food devoured in the sight of scores of miserable, 
famine-stricken villagers crying aloud for food. So tame 
had the pigeons become that I had no difficulty in catch- 
ing one, but I was immediately warned by a policeman 
8 113 



IN FAMINE LAND 

that there was no "order" to molest them. These 
pigeons would have furnished food enough to have kept 
a whole village from starving to death; but the high- 
caste Hindu would rather starve to death than kill and 
eat one of these birds. 

Seventy-five years ago Lieutenant-Colonel Todd, in 
travelling through the Marwar territory, noticed the 
peculiar way in which the villages were constructed. 
He says: "The villages are of a construction totally 
distinct from anything we have seen, and more ap- 
proaching the wigwam of the Western World. Every 
commune is surrounded with a circumvallation of thorns, 
and the stacks of boosa, or chaff, which are placed at 
intervals, give it the appearance of a respectable forti- 
fication. These boosa stacks are erected to provide 
provender for the cattle in scanty, rainy seasons, when 
the parched earth denies grass or full crops of maize. 
They are erected to the height of twenty or thirty feet, 
coated with a cement of cow-dung, and w4th a sprinkling 
of thorns to prevent the fowls of the air from reposing 
in them. In this manner, with a little fresh coating, 
they will exist ten years, being only resorted to in 
emergencies, when the kine may be said to devour the 
village walls." There were no railways in those days, 
and it is interesting to read of the primitive methods 
of these denizens of the desert, kept up even in the 
present day. 

At a station between Merta Road and Jodhpur I saw 
thousands of maunds of grain piled up in bags on the 
sand at the side of the line, and men were selling it to 
those who could pay the exorbitant price demanded. 
Off at one side a miserable company of famine-stricken 
people were looking with longing eyes towards the grain 
bags, but with little hope of ever getting any of their 
contents, A few pice distributed among them led to 

114 



IN FAMINE LAND 

an unexpected demonstration. About fifty half -starved 
people rushed together and clamored for more. Their 
cries were pitiful. I turned to a bunya and asked him 
to weigh out some grain for them. But before he would 
allow a grain of it to go to the starving people I must 
meet his cash demands. And, after the bargain was 
closed, it was difficult to distribute the grain equitably 
among the noisy and clamoring crowd about me. There 
was no time for ceremony. The crowd jostled one 
another and fairly overpowered the man with the grain 
basket, and each snatched away the portion intended 
for another, and the train left, amid a scene of great 
confusion, the bunya fighting to save his basket and his 
person and the people to get the last available grain. 
Alas! man, "made a little lower than the angels," has 
fallen to the level of the brutes. 

It was with much interest that I looked about the 
town of Jodhpur, the capital of the Jodhpur state. 
Even an enlightened rajah and a famous prime-minister 
could not ward off a famine. There were the usual 
gaunt, hungry men and women and emaciated children 
with pitiful voices crying for food. 

Jodhpur, or, as it is sometimes called, Marwar, or 
"place of death," is the largest of the Rajputana states; 
its greatest length is about three hundred miles, and 
its greatest width one hundred and thirty miles. It 
contains an area of 37,000 square miles. The popula- 
tion of the state is about three millions — eighty -six 
per cent. Hindus, ten per cent. Jains, with four per 
cent, of Mohammedans. The Rajput caste predom- 
inates. 

The aspect of the country, viewed from the short line 
of sixty-four miles from Marwar Junction to the capital, 
is that of a sandy plain, from which rise here and there 
picturesque conical hills. Some of these are crowned 

IIS 



IN FAMINE LAND 

with temples, and on the summit of one, the Nadolai 
Hill, has been placed a colossal stone elephant. 

The city of Jodhpur was founded by the Maharajah 
Jodha, in 1550, and has been the seat of the capital ever 
since. Jodhpur is one of the most picturesque towns in 
India, standing on the edge of a rocky ridge of sand- 
stone, 400 feet above the plain, with a splendid citadel 
dominating it, perched on an isolated rock 800 feet high. 
The place covers nearly half the area of the citadel, 
which is, roughly, five hundred yards by two hundred. 
The Dewan, or Hall of One Thousand Pillars, is a large 
and handsome building, and the view from the upper 
fort is very extensive. 

The main streets of the city are lined with fine houses, 
palaces of the maharajah, and the town residences of the 
nobles and Thakurs, many of whom are very wealthy. 
A strong wall, six miles in circumference, with seven 
gates, encircles the city. But it was all, indeed, a 
"place of death." 

Marwar is rightly named — it is a "place of death." 
Perhaps no native state has suffered more than Jodhpur. 
The territory is mainly a sandy plain, which shades off 
into the great Rajputana desert — a sort of "No Man's 
Land." There had been a succession of bad seasons, 
when no rain fell, no crops were raised, and the farmers 
were not only out of food but out of work. Perhaps in 
the whole history of famines there has been no such 
record of mortality among cattle as in Marwar. Fully 
ninety per cent, of all the cattle perished. Many of the 
people perished with their cattle, for the farmers stay 
by their patient beasts till the last. The farmer without 
cattle is ruined. The hunya early commenced his ex- 
tortion in Marwar. He made the farmers follow^ him 
about like dogs. They were his bond slaves, and ever 
at his mercy. Thousands of the Jodhpur people tried 

116 



IN FAMINE LAND 

to escape by migrating. But it was out of the frying- 
pan into the fire. Bones and hides were available in 
those days all along the pilgrim way. The via dolorosa 
was strewn with them. The state was impoverished. 
A large loan had to be made by the imperial govern- 
ment in order to enable the state to open relief works. 
The energetic prime-minister, Sir Pertab Singh, backed 
by the council and advised by the British Resident, did 
much to alleviate the suffering. But it was beyond the 
power of man to do more than touch the fringe of it. 
At such a time as this the railway shows its usefulness. 
The Rajputana-Malwa and the Jodhpur-Bikanir rail- 
ways brought from the Northwest Provinces thousands 
of tons of grain. It was this which served the relief 
works and made them possible. But there was a 
fodder famine as well. A regiment of Imperial Service 
Cavalry was sent as far as Muttra to escape the fodder 
famine. 

Added to these calamities was the inevitable cholera 
epidemic. At and around Pali, where many thousands 
were on relief works, cholera broke out and carried off 
many hundreds. It was difficult at first to find any 
one willing to remove and burn the bodies, and such was 
the fear of the disease that the people left the relief 
works and carried the infection far and wide. The 
opinion of one making a special study of the famine and 
its results, uttered at the beginning of May, that "there 
can no longer be any doubt that a calamity of the most 
appalling kind is beginning to break over India, and 
that hundreds of thousands of poor wretches who have 
been reduced by want and by the hardships and un- 
natural conditions of life in the famine camps will go 
down before the blast," was being verified. Truly, the 
condition of the Marwari was wretched. Possessing 
neither cash nor credit, food nor fodder, water nor work, 

117 



IN FAMINE LAND 

harried by hunger and cut down by cholera, he could 
only turn his pleading face to the passer-by and point 
with his bony finger heavenward. 

Leaving Jodhpur at ii p.m., I reached Marwar Junc- 
tion in the early morning, and there, unexpectedly 
meeting the Rev. W. W. Ashe, M.D., who had come 
from Aligarh to assist in famine work, we proceeded 
together to visit the relief camp near at hand. We 
found a large enclosure, in which the poor people herded 
at night, and a food depot from which grain was given 
out. Piles of material for making string cots, and bam- 
boos for making roofs and booths, and wood to cook 
with, were piled up near the rail way -lines. But when I 
asked for grain to feed about a hundred people who 
gathered about, only a mere handful of maize could be 
found. I sent to a village near by for some pice, and, 
remembering my experience in distributing the com, I 
had the people seated in a long row and two men com- 
menced to give out pice, one from either end, while the 
relief camp employes stood, sticks in hands, to keep 
order. But when, desiring to hasten the distribution, I 
took the pice myself, and, telling the men with sticks 
to stand back, commenced to dispense my own charity, 
the whole miserable crowd sprang upon me like a pack 
of hungry wolves, and I saw one of the difficulties of 
doing such work in an orderly manner without the use 
of means to suppress the unspeakable impatience of 
the people. 

On the way back from the station, on the outskirts of 
the village. Dr. Ashe found the skeleton of a child, and 
brought away part of the bones of the head in his 
handkerchief, to preserve as a memento. 

At Sujat Road, where we took breakfast, Mr. S. O. 
Smith, District Traffic Inspector on the Rajputana- 
Malwa railway, told me pitiful tales of the condition of 

ii8 



IN FAMINE LAND 

the people up and down the Hne, and of his efforts to 
help save some of them. As a result of the short talk 
a committee was formed, funds were furnished, and a 
most successful kitchen was started. Thus, within a 
short distance of each other, two valuable agents were 
found who gave splendid help all through the famine. 

At Biawar we were kindly entertained in the home 
of the Rev. J. Anderson Brown, M.A., of the United 
Presbyterian Mission. Mr. Brown, being secretary and 
treasurer of the Mission Famine Relief Committee, was 
able to give me much useful information. They had 
rescued about thirteen hundred children, who are dis- 
tributed among the orphanages. It was an interesting 
but pathetic sight to see some of the poor waifs who 
had recently been rescued from starvation. Dr. R. G. 
Robson, who is associated with Mr. Brown, showed 
us his excellent arrangements for segregating his fever, 
ophthalmia, and dysentery cases. Disease is sure to 
follow in the wake of famine, and many rescued from the 
latter will succumb to the former. But what a blessed 
thing it is to be able to save some of these poor wrecks of 
humanity. More to be valued and greater to be praised 
than the life-saving stations established along stormy 
coasts are these havens where many a poor submerged 
one has been rescued from starvation, disease, and death. 

I spent Sunday and Monday, April 8th and 9th, in 
Ajmir, inspecting the famine orphanages and other 
work, holding our Famine Relief Committee, planning 
that a more systematic effort should be made to save 
the children. A sum of money was voted to each 
preacher in charge of rescue work, and an allowance 
per mensem to each circuit to help any particularly 
needy Christians, to be reported monthly to the secre- 
tary, who was directed to keep a descriptive record of 
each person rescued, for future reference. Relief, in the 

119 



IN FAMINE LAND 

form of payment for work, would be continued, as far as 
practicable, and industrial work, such as weaving, shoe- 
making, etc., was to be carried on at Bikanir, Phalera, 
and Ajmir, in connection with the training-schools and 
orphanages at those places. 

New dormitories for girls and women were just com- 
pleted, and a much-needed school-house commenced by- 
Miss Marks, who, with Miss Try on, was indefatigable 
in helping the famine-stricken, of whom hundreds have 
been rescued and are being fed. One large dormitory 
and school-house for the boys' orphanage was com- 
pleted by Mr. Plomer, and another dormitory was being 
built, and a new church for both orphanages. 

A visit, on Monday afternoon, with Rev. George Hen- 
derson, of the Seaman's Mission, Calcutta, and Mr. 
Plomer, to the government poor-house, was interesting 
and instructive. A mile out of town, on the other side 
of a hill, on a level place, was a large square, walled in 
with grass, internally divided into other smaller squares 
for the various classes of paupers — men, women, children, 
sick, etc. In a smaller square was the kitchen, where 
they were cooking mush, made of cracked wheat and 
dot, in a large caldron, and under a thatch at one side 
making large chapaties, or unleavened cakes, of wheat 
flour. They told us that there were 484 inmates that 
are destitute and are unfit for relief works. Such were 
received and fed until either able to work, in which 
case they earn something at the relief camp or dis- 
appear in several natural ways. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings I gave dinners 
to the poor Christians at Sali and Naraina respectively, 
two towns near the railway between Kishangarh and 
Phalera. At the first of these places I found some one 
hundred and fifty miserable creatures assembled, and the 
dinner cooking in a large pot. Four or five Christian 

120 



IN FAMINE LAND 

men, under the direction of the preacher in charge, 
soon seated the people in two long rows on either side 
of a quiet street; a short service of song and prayer 
and a homily was conducted ; then large leaves, pinned 
together, were distributed for plates; the waiters came 
with large dishes full of the delicious mixture of rice 
and dal; about a pound was given to each, and then, 
for the space of the next twenty minutes, not a sound 
was heard save the sound which actually sounded 
musical — the sound of one hundred and fifty starving 
Christians eating. 

At Naraina, the next evening, there was a much 
larger crowd, for not only did the 200 Christians also 
come, but nearly all the poor of the town. These latter 
had to be turned away, as well as several Christians 
who had seated themselves separately from the others, 
hoping thus to save their caste by not coming in contact 
with those of lower degrees. When all were seated, 
there was the usual service, the distribution of leaves, 
the dishing-out and the serving of food, the silent eating, 
and a concluding spontaneous expression of gratitude. 
It cost fifteen rupees to give these two dinners, or 
about three dollars. 

I stopped two days in Jaipur to visit the great famine 
relief camp there. I walked about half a mile from 
the railway-station to the ofhce of the superintendent, 
and was accompanied to the works and the camp by 
the assistant, whose business it is to enroll and feed the 
people. First of all, he showed me the daily register, 
from which he permitted me to take the following 
figures for the 12th of April — viz., On the works: men, 
2773; women, 2370; children, 1888; total, 7031. In 
hospital, 450; children receiving gratuitous aid, 1102. 
Total in relief camp, 8583. When I got to the works, 
about 8 A.M., I found more than seven thousand people, 

121 



IN FAMINE LAND 

like a colony of ants, busy removing a sand-bank, by 
filling baskets and carrying them on their heads across 
a narrow valley, which was to be levelled. The official 
told me they worked six hours a day, and each would get 
from a pound to a pound and a half of flour in the evening, 
which they prepared for the day's food. They were not 
given fuel, but saved grass roots and other combustibles 
dug from the hill in the course of the day's work. Some 
distance away were 400 huts, half under and half above 
ground, covered with thatch, each designed for twenty, 
in which the poor people lodge. There were a hospital 
and a storehouse, and a place for orphans, of whom 
there were 114, and, on the outskirts, places for the 
disposal of the dead. Carts from the transport corps 
were constantly bringing in the needy from the villages 
and carrying out the sick to the hospital, and the dead 
to the dead-house. About a hundred new-comers sat, 
or stood, at the road-side, pleading to be taken on. 
Some of them had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, 
and would get nothing till evening. But perhaps no 
native state in Rajputana looks after its poor better 
than Jaipur. The maharajah has given fifteen lakhs of 
rupees, to remain at the disposal of the imperial govern- 
ment, for famine relief. Roads, wells, tanks, and other 
improvements were being made, at the expense of the 
state, to afford aid to the sufferers. Private subscrip- 
tions were opened and wealthy citizens have given 
liberally. But, in spite of it all, the heavens were brass 
and the sandy plains bore no fruit. 



XIII 

RECEIVING AND GIVING 

"Bis dat qui cito dat." 

"He who has his food to himself has his sin to himself." 
Rigveda, x., 117, 6. 

Early in the year a famine committee was formed 
at Ajmir, which thoroughly organized the work of rehef 
in Rajputana, and carefully administered the funds 
which came into its hands from various sources, and 
employed agents to rescue the perishing and gather 
starving waifs into central stations and rescue camps, 
where they could be fed and clothed and distributed. 
This relief was rendered possible through the munificent 
contributions of a multitude of Christian givers through- 
out the world, under the direction of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Missionary Society, the Americo-Indian Famine 
Relief Committee, the American Sialkot Mission Com- 
mittee, the Christian Herald, New York; the Christian, 
London; the Indian Witness, Calcutta; the Guardian, 
Bombay; the Indian Sunday-School Journal, Calcutta, 
and other societies, committees, and periodicals; also 
through the private donations of friends, sent direct to 
the chairman or other members of the famine com- 
mittee. As a specimen of these latter, and to show how 
far-reaching was the sympathy for the people in their 
distress, I quote the following letter, which contained 
seventy-five rupees: 

123 



IN FAMINE LAND 

"Anglo-Chinese College, Foochow, China, July 12, 1900. 

" Dear Dr. Scott, — Some of the students of our college have 
been reading of the intense suffering caused by the famine 
in India, and have subscribed a small sum as a token of their 
sympathy. I trust that in the providence of God the little 
gift may be the means of saving some one from starving. I 
should prefer it to be used among the Christians, and that they 
be told that it represents the Christian love of their brothers in 
China. May God richly bless you in your work. We have 
had a good year in our work. A revival in the college resulted 
in over seventy conversions. 

"Yours in the Master's service, 

"James Simester, 

"Acting President." 

From all sources more than two lakhs of rupees 
($67,000) have passed through the hands of the com- 
mittee for the relief of the starving poor of Rajputana. 

One of the most touching results of the famine was 
the self-denying love and sympathy aroused in the hearts 
of many who could not afford to help much, but sent 
a little they got together by careful saving and per- 
sonal effort. Such money is very precious. Take, for 
instance, the Aligarh orphans, themselves just out of 
famine, doing without their Christmas-dinner that they 
might have something with which to help the starving 
Christians of Rajputana; or the equally sincere self- 
denial of the inmates of the Lucknow Widows' Home; 
or the five-rupee money-order from a child ; or children 
giving up their birthday money; or collections taken in 
native communities when they were needing funds to 
support their own current work. 

The children of America very zealously helped to 
raise money for the Christian Herald fund. Some of 
their little offerings are reported below: 

Mrs. H. L. B., Raleigh, Illinois, $i. From Hal, aged six 
years; he had saved it to buy a tool-chest. — A Friend, 

124 



IN FAMINE LAND 

$io. From a young girl who went without car-fare to 
save money to buy a camera. Reading in a copy of 
the Christian Herald that fell into her hands of the 
deserted, helpless children of India, she said: "Oh, I 
can't be so wicked and selfish as to spend this on a 
camera. I hear the cry of those poor little babies all 
night. This money will almost care for one orphan 
for a whole year." — Mrs. G. Parker, Minnesota, $i. " My 
little five-year-old son, Warren, has been saving up his 
money for over a year to buy a black-board. May the 
Lord bless his little gift." — Evelyn Dennison. "I send 
four cents ; all I have." — Mrs. Ingle, 25 cents. " My little 
boy sends all his money for India's children." — Claire 
Woodsun, Maine, 25 cents. " I had it to buy candy with." 
— Little Aggie Boray, $5 . "I gave up my birthday-party 
to make some poor little orphans happy on my birth- 
day." — George and Hazel Reynolds, $2.25. "Hazel 
sold her three chickens to make hers." — May Hughes, 
$1. "My sister Janie and I have made it for the wee 
India orphans." 

Mr. Thomas A. Bailey, assistant secretary of the 
Americo-Indian Famine Relief Committee, received the 
following touching letter from Taubuland, South Africa : 

"I am sending you an order for £2 towards the 
famine fund. You will be interested in hearing that 
fifteen shillings of this amount is from our household — 
that is, our Kaffir servants. Last evening (Sabbath) 
I read to them of the famine and need, and they were 
much interested. Faithful old John was our first 'boy' 
at Lutubenl, where we lived for a year. He and his 
wife have been with us practically since we came up here ; 
we believe they have both received the Lord Jesus into 
their hearts, and now they are very keen to get others 
saved. We do thank God for them. John came to me 

125 



IN FAMINE LAND 

to-day and said he and his wife wished to give some 
money to help the poor famine sufferers. He has two 
pounds that I am keeping, saved from his wages, and 
he said they did not quite know how much — would one 
pound do? I said ten shillings was enough, I thought, 
and thanked him. But he said ' No.' He thanked me 
for telling them of the poor Indians. Then Mbete, a 
young boy who professes to love the Lord, and is, we 
hope, real and sincere — he wished to know how much I 
wanted, but I said ' No ; I don't want to make it heavy 
for you. You choose yourself.' He then said ten shil- 
lings, but I said five shillings would be a nice little help. 
So he was satisfied." 

But a very brief account of the various forms of 
famine relief carried on during the year can -be given 
in this chapter. It was found better to give the stricken 
people food rather than money, for starving people have 
no fuel, and cooked food is better than dry grain. And 
so kitchens were started at many places, as Tilaunia, 
Naraina, Phalera, and Sujat Road, where thousands of 
poor famishing creatures were fed daily. In June, 
thirty-seven wagons, or 7400 bags, of maize were re- 
ceived from the Christian Herald corn-ship Quito, and 
from this the kitchens were supplied, and grain-shops 
were opened at convenient centres, where the very 
poor could get a gratuitous daily dole and others could 
purchase for a nominal price. From these shops were 
gathered nearly ten thousand rupees, mostly in pice, 
which were again distributed in the form of food and 
clothing. During the year nearly three thousand waifs 
were rescued and gathered into four orphanages and a 
widows' home, or sent to institutions organized else- 
where. 

Two training-schools were opened for pastor-teachers 

126 




GRAIN STORED AT GODHRA READY FOR VILLAGES 



IN FAMINE LAND 

at Phalera and Bikanir respectively. Industrial work 
of various kinds was opened up. Many weavers, es- 
pecially Christians, were employed in weaving cloth. 
At Ajmir, Tilaunia, Phalera, and Bikanir a number were 
thus helped. The Bikanir Christians alone wove about 
two thousand woollen blankets. When the cold season 
came on nearly ten thousand blankets and suits of 
clothing were distributed to the destitute. Every poor 
Christian in Rajputana received warm clothing. For 
the use of the schools and orphanages suitable buildings 
have been erected at Ajmir and Phalera. 

The beautiful new stone church, built at Ajmir by 
Mr. Plomer, was dedicated in May, 1900, and the com- 
modious Memorial School-house for the girls' school at 
Ajmir was opened in March, 1901. 

In reviewing the famine work of the past year it is 
impossible to describe the anxiety and solicitude of those 
engaged in it, nor the personal hardships which they 
endured. I can corroborate all that Miss Marks wrote 
concerning the condition of things in May : 

"Conditions are growing steadily worse. Horrible 
stories come to us from eye - witnesses — government 
officials, missionaries, railway employes, and natives — 
of bodies by the way-side being devoured by vultures, 
jackals, and dogs. Heart-rending cases have come un- 
der my own observation. No pen can exaggerate the 
suffering. Families separate to seek food, never to meet 
again. Children are beaten and turned from their 
homes. Wives are thrust out with two or three children 
clinging to them. The aged, the crippled, and the blind 
are left by the road -side to die. Hundreds of orphans, 
forsaken by their relatives, wander about, begging and 
picking up anything the}'" can find to eat. The grain 
market is thronged with these human birds, picking out 

127 



IN FAMINE LAND 

of the dirt every grain that falls, and even gathering 
manure to wash from it the undigested grains. 

"Orphans brought to us as the famine increases are 
more and more emaciated. A child was brought to us 
who had lain, sick and naked, by the road-side for eight 
days without a morsel of food. She looked more like 
an animal than a human being. Care and nourishment 
have wrought a wondrous change in her. 

"Yesterday a boy, thirteen years of age, was brought 
to our veranda, just as he was gasping his last. The 
emaciated body, sunken cheeks, and hollow eyes told 
the sad tale of starvation. A few minutes afterwards 
two more boys came up, and if you could only have 
heard the pitiful cry of those two brothers as they gazed 
upon the face of the dying lad whom they had lost in 
their wanderings and had not seen for fifteen days! 
' Have we found you only to look into your dead face?' 
they wailed. Mother and father had succumbed to 
hunger, and these three brothers had for a time tried 
to keep together, but in their quest for food were 
separated. 

" Last night I found a little boy, nearly four years of 
age, sitting at the door of the railway - station. He 
looked up into my face in such a hopeless way, and I 
said, 'Have you no father or mother?' 

" ' No ; my mother died of hunger, and my father went 
off and left me,' was the reply, with the reiteration, 'I 
haven't got any one.' 

"'Will you come with me?' I asked. You should 
have seen with what alacrity he jumped up, and the 
smile that illumined his dirty face. Friends, you would 
not have had me leave him to perish. 

"This morning a Bible -reader and pastor - teacher 
brought twenty-seven starving widows and children to 
us. As they came along they saw a young girl lying 

128 



IN FAMINE LAND 

dead by the road-side. No doubt as to the cause of 
death. Starvation written in every feature. And the 
twenty-seven — naked, covered with vermin, filth, and 
sores." 

Later Miss Marks wrote: "No pen can exaggerate 
the suffering. Thousands of homeless, naked, and starv- 
ing ones wander about from village to village in search 
of work, water, and food. The aged, the crippled, and 
the blind are left by the road- side to die. Hundreds 
of children, forsaken by friends, go about begging and 
picking up anything they can find to eat. I pray God 
I may never witness another famine. That awful cry, 
' I am dying of hunger,' rings in my ears even when I lie 
down to rest at~ night. How they do plead for work! 
Men fall at my feet, crying and clutching my dress, 
begging me to give them work. We are doing our 
utmost ; we realize that this is the opportunity to show 
the heathen what Christianity means." On August 
23d she again wrote: "We are grateful for all the 
help received for the poor starving creatures about us. 
The rains have come in earnest, and we trust that in 
three months more this famine will be a thing of the 
past. By that time some of the crops ought to be ready 
for harvest. The government has given seed, ploughs, 
and oxen to the poor farmers who escaped death. 
There is still great suffering, so many are homeless and 
naked. In their weak, emaciated condition they suc- 
cumb from exposure to the rain. It is sad to see them, 
lying or sitting huddled together under a tree to shelter 
themselves. We continue to take in widows and or- 
phans, and have no difficulty in finding homes for those 
we cannot keep permanently. Our kitchens, where, for 
months, we have fed several hundred people daily, are 
kept up, and will be so long as there is need for them. 
9 129 



IN FAMINE LAND 

We are now distributing as much clothing as possible. 
We gave a contract to-day for 6000 blankets for the 
poor. The famine people are weaving the cloth, we 
furnishing the thread and paying them enough for the 
weaving to buy their food. Fifty Christian families 
have been kept from starving by giving them work on 
our premises and on the new school building. We have 
rescued three thousand girls and widows, and all have 
been clothed, doctored, nursed, and fed. Our family 
now numbers 700; the authorities have limited our 
number in the city, and, at the same time, do not want 
the children sent out of their own territory; therefore, 
we expect to establish a second orphanage at Phalera, a 
village six hours by rail from Ajmir, and we will have 
500 girls in the two. The Widows' Home, of about one 
hundred inmates, will also be in Phalera. These widows 
must be supported until they learn to care for themselves. 
We hope that many will become earnest Christians and 
receive the call from above to preach the glad tidings 
to their own people. It would take a volume to write 
all the experiences of the year ; we have passed through 
deep waters, but the Lord has gone before, and the 
everlasting arms have upheld." 



XIV 

SUJAT ROAD 

"Give me three grains of corn, mother — 
Only three grains of corn; 
It will keep the little life I have 
Till the coming of the morn." 

How I came to help in the work at Sujat Road was 
this: I had been on a tour of reHef to Bikanir and 
Jodhpur, and was returning to Ajmir via Marwar 
Junction, where I met Dr. Ashe, who subsequently took 
charge of the famine relief work at Phalera, and we 
both breakfasted together at the next station, Sujat 
Road. When we entered the refreshment-room I was 
greeted by Mr. S. O. Smith, the District Traffic Inspector 
on the Rajputana-Malwa railway, and we at once com- 
menced to talk about the famine, in which we were all 
very much interested. He told us that he had been 
doing what he could to help the poor people, and that 
their condition was most distressing, but he was greatly 
hindered for lack of funds. I was glad to be able to 
assure him aid in this good work, and, giving him loo 
rupees which I had with me, told him that I would 
send him more if he would organize the work up and 
down the line, and open kitchens and grain- shops, and 
feed the people. This was the beginning of a great work, 
which continued under Mr. Smith's supervision until 
the rains came and the famine ended. He not only 
fed thousands of starving creatures at his kitchens, but 
he rescued hundreds of children and sent them to our 

131 



IN FAMINE LAND 



orphanages, and gave grain for seed, and ploughs with 
which to plough the land, and when the cold weather 
came on distributed many hundreds of warm blankets, to 
protect them from the wet and cold. Miss Marks and 
Miss Try on and Dr. Emma Scott found him exceedingly 
helpful in seconding all their efforts to "rescue the 
perishing," and many a poor child they brought in to 
Ajmir through his aid. 

He directed the native men who were sent out by us 
to gather up the starving, and gave assistance in send- 
ing the waifs on the trains. In all this he was not 
alone, for Mrs. Smith was in deep sympathy with all the 
work, and prepared, with her own hands, light foods 
for the little ones and the very weak. Mr. Smith or- 
ganized his staff, the station-masters and other railway 
subordinates, into a famine committee, which did m^ost 
excellent work. He was also a member of our central 
committee at Ajmir, and often gave valuable help in 
planning for the work. All up and down the line, from 
Sujat Road to Abu Road and beyond, he fed the 
starving people, and made regular reports, showing the 
systematic way in which the work was done. Some 
of those reports are before me as I write. He had 
kitchens at Sujat Road, Rani, Mehsana, Erinpura Road, 
Banas, Raho, Disa, and other places. Below is a weekly 
report for Raho, one of the smaller kitchens : 

STATEMENT OF STARVING PEOPLE FED AT RAHO STATION FROM 
JULY lo TO JULY i6, igoo 



Date 


Weight of grain, 

maunds' and 

seers 


Number of 
bags 


Number fed 


Children 


Women 


Men 


July lo 
II 

12 

". 13 

14 

■' IS 

" i6 


I — 30 
1—30 
I — 30 
1—30 
I — 30 
I — 30 
1 — 30 


i^ 
1 54 
i^ 

i54 
iMa 


ISO 
160 
170 
200 
200 
200 
200 


ISO 
160 
160 
ISO 
160 
ISO 
160 


70 
80 
80 
75 
75 
80 
80 



1 A maund is equal to eighty pounds. 
132 



IN FAMINE LAND 

In writing of the work under Mr. Smith, I cannot give 
a better account of the rehef carried on by him than 
that contained in his letters and reports sent me from 
time to time. On the loth of June he wrote me from 
Abu Road concerning his kitchen. This kitchen had 
been recently opened to feed the starving poor in the 
villages immediately about Mr. Smith's headquarters, 
and there was no intention that this would in any way 
overlap the work being done by the state at Marwar 
Junction. 

"Dear Dr. Scott, — The Jodhpur Durbar have at last woke 
up to the fact of our feeding their starving at Sujat Road. 
So they sent in some officials and carted over five hundred 
men, women, and children away to Marwar Junction and other 
famine works. This, of course, reHeves our kitchen; but a few, 
about fifty, remain, and so I am keeping on feeding. I am 
sorry for the poor people, for numbers, to a certainty, will die 
if all one hears of the feeding at Marwar Junction is true. 

"This will stop our rescue of children at Suiat Road in a great 
measure. But still I can do a lot in the district, and will do so. 
I brought in thirty-one on Saturday, and sent them in with Miss 
Marks, who came to Sujat. I expect to get some at Raho to- 
morrow, and hope to make up a good number this week from 
different stations. Yours sincerelj'^, 

"S. O. Smith." 

Dr. Ashe and I had inspected the relief camp at 
Marwar Junction and were not favorably impressed 
with all the arrangements. Certainly these poor people 
would not be so well fed as at Sujat Road, where they 
were getting their food free of expense to the state. 
But the removal of these only made room for a kitchen 
elsewhere. There was no danger of being left without 
applications for food. Everywhere there were gaunt 
creatures, with diaphragms knocking against their spine, 
and little children with pinched faces and old looks and 
shrivelled bodies, whose pleading looks kept telling the 



IN FAMINE LAND 

pathetic story of hunger. On the 20th Mr, Smith 
wrote me again: 

"My wife writes me to-day that our kitchen work at 
Sujat Road has entirely stopped. The rajah has at last 
wakened up to the fact that we were feeding six hundred 
of their poor and starving, and they have taken every 
one away to Karthi, and have asked us to stop our 
kitchen work. 

" I have sent word now to stop the feeding for a time, 
till we see how matters go. This will stop my rescue 
of orphans from Sujat Road, in a measure, but I am 
still collecting them from the district. 

' ' I sent in nine yesterday. In order to collect orphans, 
I gave a feed at Raho yesterday, when ninety poor 
starved wretches sat down to dinner. As the work 
at Sujat Road is stopped, may I utilize the money and 
form small kitchens at other stations, under good and 
reliable supervision? Reply early." 

It was exceedingly necessary that the starving people 
be rescued and fed as soon as possible, for the suffering 
was becoming intolerable and the mortality increasing 
day by day. The proposition to open other kitchens 
was at once approved. I told him to do so, and several 
new kitchens were the result. I received almost daily 
letters as to the progress of the work. On the 21st he 
wrote from Mehsana: 

"I am going on rescuing children and sending them 
into Ajmir every week. I sent in eight to Sujat Road 
on the 19th. Some of them were picked up in a bad 
state and need a good deal of care to bring them around. 
If you have received your Christian Herald fund food- 
stuffs, send me a couple of dozen tins of any of the 

134 



IN FAMINE LAND 

following milk - foods — viz. : (i) Nestle's milk - food ; 
(2) Allen Hamburey's food; (3) Mellin's food, or any- 
other of similar foods.* 

"These bring the little ones around very rapidly, 
I hope I'll be able to meet you at the next meeting at 
Ajmir. I have opened kitchens at Disa and Raho, 
and will endeavor to open another at Rohira or Pind- 
wara with the consent of the rajah. I have also made 
a grant of fifty rupees to Mr. Sheffield, loco-foreman, 
Mehsana, who is doing excellent work, and I shall send 
him fifty bags of the corn when I get it. It has not 
arrived yet. 

"Some bags I'll send to Raho, others to Disa. I 
propose, with the remainder, to make grants for seed 
grain to impoverished farmers around Sujat Road. 

"About rescue of children, I can't do much in this 
alone, as I cannot attend to the little ones on the line. 
If you want this work continued, a couple of good, 
diligent women should be stationed at Abu Road to col- 
lect them, and a man to travel about with me, station 
to station, who could take them direct to Ajmir. This 
is the only way of doing really good work on this line. 

" I hope to be in at Ajmir on the 3d or 4th, and 
will settle the matter with the Rev. C. H. Plomer and 
Miss Marks. 

" Pandita Ramabai^ is doing excellent work on these 
lines. The feeding of the poor at Abu Road has been 
stopped by the state, and it is therefore now a splendid 
field for the rescue of children if properly worked." 

* The Rev. Dennis Osborne, of Poona, was very active in gathering 
such supplies, and during several visits to England secured large 
amounts of tinned provisions, which were sent through Messrs. 
Watson & Co., Bombay. 

^ I visited Pandita Ramabai's Mukti Mission at Kedgaon, near 
Poona, and found 1900 women and girls, mostly widows, being 
cared for. She collected Rs. I., 33,000 for this work last year. 

135 



IN FAMINE LAND 

The workers requested for rescue work were sent. 
On the 28th he wrote from Sabarmati: 

"I sent in fifteen children yesterday to Miss Marks, 
and am keeping up the rescue work quietly, so as not 
to alarm the state people. I do a little every week in 
this way. 

' ' I have received the railway receipt for the two hun- 
dred bags of grain from Bombay, and have distributed 
the bags as follows — Mehsana, thirty bags ; Disa, thirty 
bags ; Raho, forty bags. 

"We are now feeding at Mehsana, 150; Disa, 180; 
Raho, 200 ; and this week I hope to open another kitchen 
at Banas. Mr. Ker's work at Abu Road has been all 
stopped by the agent to the Governor-General, on ac- 
count of fear of cholera. I want five hundred or one 
thousand of empty bagging from your grain at Ajmir. 
May I have them? I will write to Miss Marks. I want 
to distribute a lot to the clothless poor. Can you give 
some of the blankets, just a few, for the destitute left 
at Sujat Road and any deserving cases along the line? 

" I enclose two notes for Disa and Raho, showing how 
they have begun work on the kitchens. 

"Mehsana is under the personal supervision of Mr. 
Sheffield , loco-foreman . ' ' 

It is needless to say the bags and blankets were sent. 
The poor people were as destitute of clothing as they 
were of food in many places, and the women especially 
needed covering. Again he wrote : 

"I am to-day opening two more kitchens, one here 
and the other at Rani. There are about two hundred 
starving at each station. I also opened a small kitchen 
at Banas, and will let you know later on how we are 

136 



IN FAMINE LAND 

doing. I have also written to the state people at 
Jodhpur, asking them to permit me to reopen the 
kitchen at Sujat Road, and expect to get a reply by- 
next week. 

" If they consent I'll start work at once, for the poor 
people are gathering again there. In this case I shall 
want some more of the American maize. Will you be 
able to give me any more, say one hundred or one hun- 
dred and fifty bags from either Ajmir or Tilaunia or 
Phalera? I believe the Maharajah Sirohi has stopped 
all taking away of children from his state and ordered 
Pandita Ramabai's people away from Abu Road, and 
also ordered Mr. Ker to stop sending children away. I 
am, however, doing rescue work quietly at small sta- 
tions, and will do so till I get an order to stop." 

Often those who came to our kitchens came too late. 
They were so weak that they were unable to digest the 
coarse, often insufficiently cooked, food we were prepared 
to give them. There was a great demand for tinned 
prepared foods. Messrs. Morgan and Scott, of London, 
and others were able to help in forwarding large supplies 
of such foods. Mr. Smith shows the need of it in his 
letter from Raho: 

"I stopped here this evening to supervise what my 
sub-committee is doing in the kitchen I started here. 
To-day they fed 130 children, 125 women, and 70 men. 
The men and women cannot get work, and there are a 
great number of children and women in a starved con- 
dition. Our sudden feeding has, I am afraid, killed a 
good many children. The station-master tells me, after 
the first few days there were generally four or five 
deaths a day, and one or two, even now, die daily. 

"He had to put on four mien to bury the dead. I 

^37 



IN FAMINE LAND 

picked out seventeen orphan children, mostly girls, and 
am sending them off to-night to Sujat Road, where I 
collect and send them off every week to Miss Marks. I 
sent in six from Kivrali this morning. The whole 
batch will be sent on to Miss Marks in a day or two. I 
enclose an account of our week's work at Raho up to 
date. No rain, and the outlook is very gloomy. I hope 
you can give me two hundred or three hundred bags more 
of the maize, especially if I open again at Sujat Road." 

Every few days saw a miserable little company of 
rescued children on their way to Ajmir, to the rescue 
camp, where they would be washed and clothed and 
carefully attended, and fed and nursed back to health, 
and then fitted for some useful employment in life. It 
was hard sometimes for mothers to give up their chil- 
dren to entire strangers, but it was harder still to see 
them pine away and die of starvation. Often parents 
would beseech us to save them. And so the good work 
went on. Helpers were sent out to rescue children. 
The heat was awful, and cholera raged in many places. 
On the ist of August Mr. Smith wrote from his head- 
quarters at Sujat Road, after many days of toil in the 
heat, rescuing and feeding the people: 

"Dear Dr. Scott, — I have not written for some time. I 
have been so ill till just now that I could not. I cannot send 
you the detailed statement of our kitchens, but the following 
is the average number fed daily: Disa, 550; Sarotra, 75; Raho, 
350; Banas, 150; Erinpura Road, 300; Rani, 400. Total, about 
1800. The rescue of children under my direction is going on 
quite well. We sent in a large number last week to Ajmir, to 
Miss Marks. Yours very sincerely, 

"S. O. Smith." 

Here were six kitchens, feeding on an average eigh- 
teen hundred people every day; and the majority of 

138 




AGED BY HUNGER 
Young girl of fitteen years 



IN FAMINE LAND 

them were women and children, who were unfit to go on 
reHef works, even when available, being too weak for 
work. What a blessing such a kitchen, conducted on 
benevolent principles, was to these poor people, who 
had no other hope in the world, and no one about them 
who "considered the poor"! With this example of 
kindness before them, it is no wonder that parents were 
willing to consign their children to our care. On the 
loth of August he wrote to Miss Marks from Sujat 
Road: 

" I trust you received the twenty-three children I sent 
in to-day all right. There were a good many girls. I 
am trying to pick girls as well as I can. Send KaH Khan 
to Sujat Road by local on Sunday ; give him fifty rupees 
in hand, as I shall take him on to Disa." 

On August 1 8th he wrote to me: 

"I have distributed 150 seers of grain to farmers at 
Raho and Sarotra, with twenty - five ploughs, but, as 
Mr. Ker, of Abu Road, is doing this also, I'll not do 
any more in this line. 

"I am now preparing to give out clothing,^ about 
500 rupees' worth, principally at Raho, Sarotra, Disa, 
and Banas. I found that what I gave at Erinpura the 
people used for food. This, I dare say, the poor people 
could not help, as the state people stopped my kitchen 
and did not feed the poor wretches themselves. They 
have come back again, and I have reopened the kitchen, 
and we fed yesterday and the day before about five 

^ Special mention should be made of Mrs. I. L. Hauser, of Chicago, 
who sent out many cases of valuable clothing, ready made, to be 
distributed among just such poor. Much of it was distributed from 
Ajmir and Phalera. 



IN FAMINE LAND 

hundred. Rani kitchen has been entirely stopped, but 
good work is being done at Raho. At Disa, just before 
the rain began, we went up to feeding twelve hundred a 
day; but as the rains have relieved the situation some- 
what they have again reduced to about five hundred 
daily. I gave out some clothing there on the 15th." * 

I quote largely from these letters for a number of 
reasons. They show how a busy man, who has to be 
out at his work nearly all the time, can get time to save 
the starving people he finds about him. They also show 
some of the difficulties he had to contend with in feeding 
and in rescuing the children. One could hardly think it 
possible that any one would break up a kitchen in fam- 
ine time when hundreds were being saved from starva- 
tion without cost to the people or the state. . Even if 
there were some irregularities about it, if there was some 
overlapping, and if starving people were drawn away 
from the state relief camp, yet surely there were enough 
left to demand all the resources of the state. 

* Mr. Smith's health gave way during the famine, and he never fully 
recovered his strength, but finally died in Lahore, in September, 1901. 



XV 

BIKANIR 

" And here he nearly died of thirst, plodding through the sand 
on a camel to the mysterious city of Bikanir, where the wells 
are four hundred feet deep and lined throughout with camel- 
bone." — ''Kim " (by Rudyard Kipling). 

Next to Jodhpur, Bikanir, which lies north of it, is 
the largest native state of Rajputana. It contains 2 2,340 
square miles of territory, without mountains, forests, or 
rivers, a great plain of shifting sand-hills, from twenty 
to one hundred feet high. In some parts there is stone, 
and near Bikanir city coal has been recently discovered, 
but "all other ground is sinking sand." 

Lieutenant-Colonel James Todd, political agent to the 
western Rajput states during the first quarter of the 
last century, wrote in his Annals of Rajisthan, concerning 
this part of the territory over which he travelled, as 
follows: "The whole of this principality, with the ex- 
ception of a few isolated spots, or oases, scattered here 
and there, consists more or less of sand. From the 
eastern to the western boundary, in the line of great- 
est breadth, it is one continuous plain of sand, though 
the teebas, or sand-hills, commence in the centre of the 
country, the principal chain running in the direction of 
Jessulmeer, and shooting forth subordinate branches in 
every direction ; or it might be more correct to designate 
this main ridge, originating in the tracts bordering the 
eastern valley of the Indus, as terminating its elevations 

141 



IN FAMINE LAND 

about the heart of Bikaneer." In this great plain of 
sand there are some tracts where the soil is good and 
the water near the surface. This is true on the north- 
east quarter, from Bhutnair to the banks of the Garah 
and over nearly the whole of the ancient Mohilla canton. 
"But, exclusive of such spots," says Colonel Todd, 
" which are few and far between, we cannot describe the 
desert as ' a waste where no salutary plant takes root, no 
verdure quickens ' ; for, though the poverty of the soil 
refuses to aid the germination of the more luxuriant 
grains, Providence has provided a countervailing good, 
in giving to those it can rear a richness and superior- 
ity unknown to more favored regions." Wheat, gram, 
and especially the grain called bajra, are of a superior 
quality. Cotton is grown in those places favorable for 
wheat, and Colonel Todd says that "the plant is said to 
be septennial, even decennial, in these regions" ; that " as 
soon as the cotton is gathered, the shoots are all cut off 
and the root alone left. Each succeeding year the plant 
increases in strength, and at length attains a size un- 
known where it is more abundantly cultivated." This 
part of Rajputana is especially noted for its many 
spontaneous vegetable products. The watermelon 
grows in great abundance and to a very great size, and 
it is as excellent in quality as it is abundant in quantity. 
It is noted beyond the boundaries of Bikanir, even where 
other fruits are plentiful, and at home it is cut in slices 
and dried in the sun and stored up for future use, when, 
perhaps, there are no vegetables, or when there is a 
famine sore on the land. " In these arid regions," says 
Colonel Todd, in his valuable Annals, "where they de- 
pend entirely on the heavens for water, and where they 
calculate on a famine every seventh year, nothing that 
can administer to the wants of man is lost. The seeds 
of the wild grapes are collected, and, mixed with hajra 

142 



IN FAMINE LAND 

flour, enter much into the food of the poorer classes. 
They also store up great quantities of the wild ber, khyr, 
and kharil berries ; and the long pods of the kaijra, as- 
tringent and bitter as they are, are dried and formed 
into a flour. Nothing is lost in these regions which can 
be converted into food." 

The water supply throughout these regions is very 
scanty. The normal rainfall throughout the state is 
very much below that of more favored regions, in many 
places being not more than nine inches, compared with 
an average of forty-one inches throughout the empire. 
There are no rivers, and the few lakes to be found con- 
tain water too brackish either for drinking or irrigation 
purposes. The people are, therefore, dependent upon 
their wells. Concerning the water, our Annals state 
that "this indispensable element is at an immense dis- 
tance from the surface throughout the Indian desert, 
which, in this respect, as well as many others, differs 
very materially from that portion of the great African 
desert in the same latitudes. Near the capital the 
wells are more than two hundred cubits, or three hun- 
dred feet, in depth ; and it is rare that water fit for man 
is found at a less distance from the surface than sixty 
in the tracts decidedly termed thul, or desert." 

At Bikanir city I saw wells more than three hundred 
feet deep, with little engines at the mouth to draw up 
the water. But in many places even the well-water is 
so salty and bitter that it is unfit either for drinking or 
for the field, and the people are compelled to depend 
upon rain-water. As in famine times most of the wells 
go dry, or, as they say, become "blind," and as there 
is no rain-water, the poor people not only starve for 
want of food, but famish for lack of water. 

The population of Bikanir state is about eight hun- 
dred thousand, standing fourth as to population of the 

143 



IN FAMINE LAND 

Rajputana states. The territory, from time immemo- 
rial, was in the possession of the Jits, or Jats, a pastoral 
people of Scythic origin, until conquered by the Rahtore 
Rajputs of Jodhpur, five centuries ago. The state was 
founded by Bika, bom in 1439, sixth son of Jodh Rao, 
the founder of Jodhpur. Bika entered upon its conquest 
in 1459 and established his capital at Bikanir in 1489. 
"To this day," writes the historian, "the descendant of 
Pandu applies the unguent of royalty to the forehead 
of the successors of Beeka, on which occasion the prince 
places ' the fine of relief,' consisting of twenty-five pieces 
of gold, in the hand of the Jit. Moreover, the spot 
which he selected for his capital was the birthright of 
a Jit, who would only concede it for this purpose on the 
condition that his name should be linked in perpetuity 
with its surrender. Naira, or Nera (Nir), was the name 
of the proprietor, which Beeka added to his own, 
thus composing that of the future capital, Beekaneer" 
(Bikanir). 

Maharajah Sri Ganga Singh, Bahadur, is the present 
ruling chief. He is a young man of some twenty -three 
years of age, enlightened in his ways, and possessing a 
good English education. The revenues of the state 
amount to about eighteen lakhs of rupees, or $600,000, 
annually. 

Bikanir, the capital, the city of the desert, has a 
population under fifty thousand. It is surrounded by 
a stone wall, with battlements and towers, and has a 
solid and substantial appearance. For hundreds of 
years Bikanir has been the home of wealthy merchants 
and bankers, who do business in Calcutta and Bombay 
and other large cities of the empire. The Jodhpur- 
Bikanir railway has been in operation for some years, 
and the extension is being pushed on to Bhatinda, which 
will give an outlet to the Punjab. 

144 



IN FAMINE LAND 

But one crop is raised during the year, when the 
season is favorable. Millets form the staple crops. 
Although sand abounds, yet in good years, during and 
after the rains, the grass grows in abundance, making 
it a splendid pasture-land. In consequence Bikanir is 
famous for its horses, cattle, and buffaloes. Camels also 
thrive, and are found most useful in travelling across the 
sandy plains. During the late famine Bikanir, from one 
end to the other, was a land of death. The conditions 
were perfect. But little rain had fallen for three years. 
The wells, for the most part, had gone dry. There were 
no rivers or canals. There was nothing in all that great, 
rolling plain of twenty-two thousand square miles but 
burning sand. The cattle were driven away in search 
of pasturage, or their bones and hides had become 
articles of commerce, and were either giving forth their 
evil odor at the railway-stations, or else were rattling 
down over the road to Cawnpore or Bombay to find a 
market. Whole villages were deserted, only the bare 
walls showing where human beings had lived. A rail- 
way official told me that he saw parts of a human skeleton 
in a bone-heap. A gentleman travelling with me in the 
compartment of a train sprang to his feet and pointed 
to dogs devouring a human body at the side of the line. 
The cry of the hungry at the railway- stations haunt 
me still. Children, with old-looking, pinched faces and 
shrunken bodies and spindly legs, held out their puny 
little hands and begged. Mothers, often with mere 
skeletons of babies in their arms and other children 
dragging at their scanty, ragged skirts, pleaded not so 
much for themselves as for their offspring. Over it all 
was the silence of death. The heavens were brass. The 
wind blew fierce and hot, and the sand it carried stung 
as it struck the face and settled down upon everything. 
The very crows, usually so jaunty and impudent, sat 
lo 145 



IN FAMINE LAND 

forlorn, with wide - open mouths, gasping for breath. 
And cholera! Alas for the poor wretches eating things 
never intended for human food, and drinking the filthy, 
contaminated water of the almost empty tank or well! 
I spent a day at Nagaur, between Merta Road and 
Bikanir, when scores were dying daily. The water 
brought me from a well, two miles distant, was of the 
color of chocolate and of the consistency of pea-soup. 
No permanganate of potash, or other chemical known 
to the sanitary committee or medical profession, could 
take the microbes out of such water. The theorist says 
" Boil it." But where is the fuel to come from in such 
times as these? Besides, no boiling could make such 
water pure. But Bikanir state was not neglected by 
its energetic rajah. More was done here to help the 
people than in some other places. Relief works were 
opened ; roads, tanks, and wells, and other useful works 
were put under construction to give employment to 
the people. It is a great thing even, although the 
achievement of complete success be beyond one's power, 
to make an effort. When the famine came it was a 
testing time, and the imperial government was anxious 
to know how the feudatory states would act in such 
an emergency. x\s Mr. Nash has said: 

"What was the policy of the native princes going to 
be? Some of them had no money in the treasury, others 
were known or suspected to be indifferent as to what 
became of their subjects, and not a rajah had before 
been called upon to steer his ship through a tempest 
that threatened annihilation. The Viceroy, at any rate, 
lost no time in declaring his policy ; and he decided early 
in the day to give the native rulers a strong lead. He 
offered loans on easy terms to the states that wanted 
money ; he sent to Rajputana, as Famine Commissioner, 

146 



IN FAMINE LAND 

Major Dunlop-Smith, who won his spurs in Hissar at 
the last famine in the Punjab, and he offered the services 
of staff - corps men, engineers, and doctors. Nobody 
could have given more practical or strenuous encour- 
agement to the chiefs, and Lord Curzon may to-day 
fairly congratulate himself on the way in which his 
challenge was accepted. With a few exceptions, the 
princes, both in Rajputana and other districts, have set 
manfully to the task of saving life, and, so far as I can 
judge, the famine organization in Rajputana has been 
as successful as could be expected. There have been 
several cases in which the native princes have shown a 
signal public spirit and capacity for effective leadership. 
The young maharajah of Bikanir took his place at the 
head of the famine organization from the start. He 
set works going in the desert, organized a system of grain 
supply, and turned over to the famine service the camel 
corps of the imperial service which Lord Dufferin in- 
vited the native states to organize." 

We early commenced to distribute relief to the starv- 
ing people of Bikanir state. At first, money relief was 
given, but afterwards doles of grain were substituted, 
as thus their primary need was directly met. A wagon 
of Christian Herald com, aggregating four hundred 
bushels, was sent to Bikanir, and a shop was opened 
within the city walls. The maharajah kindly remitted 
the octroi tax and allowed it to enter duty free. The 
political agent also wrote me as follows: 

"Dear Sir, — I have to acknowledge your letter of the 27th 

of June. His Highness is grateful to you for the trouble you 

have taken in distributing the maize at Bikanir, and hopes that 

you will express to the donors how he appreciates their kindness. 

"Believe me, yours very truly, 

"H. A. Vincent, Resident." 

147 



IN FAMINE LAND 

Advantage was taken of the need of teachers for 
primary schools to train some of the present unem- 
ployed for this work, which would be reopened, it was 
hoped, in the future more prosperous times. A train- 
ing-school, attended by about thirty men, women, and 
children, was kept up, and the poor people were fed 
with the corn. Many weavers were employed, weaving 
woollen blankets, of which they made about two thou- 
sand. The famine was particularly hard upon weavers. 
In famine times they neither have materials with which 
to weave cloth nor a market for their products. The 
weavers as a class are, even in the best of times, no- 
where well to do. The census of 1891 returned for 
British India 9,655,231 " manufacturers of textile fabrics 
and dress," and the Famine Commission of 1898 say 
of them: 

"The effect of a calamity such as famine soon mani- 
fests itself on the weaver population When the crops 
fail, the resources of the people at large are crippled, 
the customary demand for cloth is arrested, the weav- 
ing trade, ceasing for want of a market to be a source 
of profit, fails to be a means of support to those engaged 
in it, and the high price of food-grains, induced by fam- 
ine, aggravates their depressed condition As in the 
case of the poorer agricultural and the laboring classes, 
it then becomes necessary for the state to intervene and 
help the weavers by providing them with the means of 
earning a wage enough for their subsistence. The im- 
portant question arises, what should be the mode of 
relief in their case? Should they be employed in their 
own craft, or in some other form of manual labor?" 

It is, no doubt, every way preferable to give them 
work that will keep them employed in their own craft. 

148 



IN FAMINE LAND 

Agents were employed to purchase all the wool that 
could be found ; and wherever starving weavers were 
found they were set to work weaving cloth. In this 
way they were not only saved from starvation, but saved 
to their profession, which would die out if they sank 
down into mere tillers of the soil. 

In some places money had to be given to buy water. 
As at Nagaur, so at other places, it had to be brought 
from long distances, and was very scarce in quantity 
and poor in quality. Even in the best of years, in many 
places water is sold. "Water is sold," says Colonel Todd, 
"in all the large towns, by the mallis, or gardeners, who 
have the monopoly of this article. Most families have 
large cisterns, or reservoirs, called tankas, which are filled 
in the rainy season. They are of masonry, with a small 
trap-door at the top, made to exclude the external air, 
and having a lock and key affixed. Some large tankas 
are established for the community, and I understand 
that this water keeps sweet for eight and ten months' 
consumption." In famine time the supply would be- 
come exhausted, and no water could be had for love or 
money. 



XVI 

AJMIR-MAIRWARA 

"Oh, come with me and ye shall see 
How well I begin the day, 
For I'll hie to the hungriest slave I have 

And snatch his loaf away. 
Oh, come with me and ye shall see 

How my skeleton victims fall; 
How I order the graves without a stone, 
And the coffins without a pall." 

— Eliza Cook. 

AjMiR is the capital of the British province of Ajmir- 
Mairwara, which nestles Hke an oasis in the centre of a 
great desert of sand. This province contains an area of 
two thousand seven hundred square miles, and has a 
population of about five hundred and forty-three thou- 
sand, the city itself having about fifty thousand. 

The city is situated on the crest of the great Raj- 
putana water -shed, occupying, as it does, the lower 
slopes of the hill Taragarh, which dominates the city 
and rises to 2855 feet above the level of the sea. The 
city, like most of the towns of Rajputana, is surrounded 
by a stone wall and has five gateways. It has some 
wide streets and well-built houses and a few places of 
historic interest. Tradition says it was founded in 145 
A.D. Akbar had a palace outside its walls, and Jahan- 
gir made it his capital for several years. It was taken 
by the Mahrattas, who retained it till Sindhia made it 
over to the English, in 18 18. The history of Marwar, 

150 



IN FAMINE LAND 

or Mairwara, the hill country of the Mairs, lying to the 
southwest of the Ajmir district, is exceedingly interest- 
ing, as showing not only how a rough, uncivilized people 
may be tamed, but how a rough, unfruitful territory 
may be made fruitful and peaceful. The story has been 
related thus : 

"For many centuries its inhabitants were savage 
marauders, the terror of the surrounding nations. They 
made plundering expeditions into the very heart of the 
adjoining territories, but their movements were so rapid 
that they generally retreated in safety to their strong- 
holds. The large states of Rajputana, in attempting 
to subjugate Mairwara, not only entirely failed, but at 
times suffered great losses. Though they occasionally 
took a fort or burned villages here and there, they never 
succeeded in overcoming any considerable body of 
Mairs; while the latter, watching the opportunity, and 
descending rapidly on some weak point, often took 
ample revenge. Many of them were fugitives from 
other states ; they were robbers by profession and prac- 
tice. They had little or no regard for human life or 
liberty — murdering their daughters, selling their moth- 
ers, committing every kind of atrocity, without shame 
and without remorse. 

"When the district came under the British, armed 
bands paraded the country or occupied the passes. The 
servants of government were cut off ; prisoners were res- 
cued. There was no safety on the public ways. Captain 
Hall, the agent of government, first formed a regiment 
composed of Mairs. When trained, they proved them- 
selves to be good and loyal soldiers, and through them 
the robber-gangs were suppressed. 

" The Mairs had always had the most primitive ideas 
of justice. Either the contending parties, backed by 

151 



IN FAMINE LAND 

their sympathizing kinsmen, resorted to the sword, and 
blood-feuds were handed down among them from son 
to son, or the accused was challenged to prove his inno- 
cence by thrusting his hand into boiling oil or grasp- 
ing a red-hot shot. Captain Hall introduced the Pan- 
chayat ^ system for all except the highest class of offences. 

" But the plough was the chief civilizer. In 1835 Cap- 
tain Hall was succeeded by Captain Dixon. Hitherto 
the land had been so difficult of cultivation that no one 
cared to possess it. The rains were uncertain, and in 
a mountainous country, without artificial means of re- 
tention, the water soon ran off. By constructing em- 
bankments across valleys, by sinking wells and digging 
tanks, a water supply was obtained. Every man was 
encouraged by small advances of money to apply him- 
self to agriculture. A large number of professional rob- 
bers were converted into industrious farmers, and peace 
smiled upon the land. 

"Dixon's next step was to get traders to settle in the 
country. He built a town called Nyanagar — ' New City. ' 
The Mairs at first did not see the good of this, and 
thought it would only have the effect of subjecting them 
to unaccustomed exactions. The traders were also 
afraid lest the Mairs should swoop down upon the city 
and loot it; so they asked that a wall should be built 
for their protection, which was done. In a short time 
Nyanagar had nearly two thousand families. 

" As early as 1827 Captain Hall reported the complete 
and voluntary abolition of the sale of women and of 
female infanticide. The security of the country now is 
so great that the Mairs have mostly left the tops and 
declivities of the mountains, where they formerly con- 
cealed themselves, and taken up their residence in ham- 

* A native court of arbitration, consisting of the leaders of the 
clan. 

152 



IN FAMINE LAND 

lets, or single houses, among their fields and by the side 
of their wells. Their smiling and healthful countenances 
and their well-dressed condition show that they are a 
prosperous people." 

I have seen some of those "embankments across val- 
leys," and also the valleys made to "blossom as the 
rose" by them. It shows what good government can 
do for the people, and how a strong, independent, yet 
kindly hand is needed in a country like this. 

During the famine Ajmir was one of the chief centres 
from which we carried our relief to the stricken people 
in the villages. It was a mart for our grain for the 
hungry, and a storehouse for clothing for the naked, 
and a dispensary from which medicines were dispensed 
to the sick, an asylum for the widows and orphans, and 
a rest-camp for waifs rescued and carried to other places 
of refuge. Two thousand bags of corn, just unloaded 
from the steamship Quito and put down at the door pre- 
paid, found here ready hands, moved by grateful hearts, 
ready to distribute ; and by bullock-cart and by railway- 
train and on stately camel went into many a town and 
village to feed the hungry — this food, sanctified and 
blessed by the prayers of many donors — the gift of "the 
farmers of Kansas to the farmers of India." Some 
went to Srinagar and to Kharwa to feed the Bhils, some 
to Bir and Pisangan to feed the Sweepers, and some to 
Sujat Road and Disa to feed all classes. The only 
thing that distressed me was that, after having been 
put down free of all charges in Ajmir, the munic- 
ipality made us pay octroi duty on it, which had 
to be paid out of famine money sent to save from star- 
vation. 

From far and near were brought to Ajmir, to be dis- 
tributed to places of refuge, the gaunt and starving 

153 



IN FAMINE LAND 

waifs. Between four and five thousand miserable hu- 
man beings were thus snatched from death. 
Mr. Clancy tells what he saw one day: 

"At Ajmir I went to the station to see a company of 
people that were being taken through by two ladies. 
They stopped at Ajmir to rest and give them food. It 
V\^as a most repulsive sight. When they got out of the 
train they were in worse condition than a car-load of 
hogs, and the smells were almost unendurable, and yet 
those refined ladies went about among them, attending 
to their wants as if they were their brothers and sisters. 
Before they left two or three of the worst cases died. 
One who has not seen famine can form no idea of what 
it means." 

I was present there that day. It was in the month 
of June, the hottest month in the year, when the ther- 
mometer registers i6o degrees in the sun and 115 de- 
grees in the shade. And yet these refined ladies had 
travelled with those children for hours in a third- 
class carriage. When they were got out of the train 
onto the long railw^ay - platform, the only thing that 
could be done in the way of cleansing was to call water- 
men and have them pour water over them from the 
water-skins. There was no place for them to rest on 
the platform ; in fact, they would not be allowed to re- 
main there, so I hastened across the street and secured 
the whole of a native inn — an open court-yard with 
rows of rooms around it, fronted by a veranda — and 
into this they were taken to rest, and be fed, and await 
the time of departure in the afternoon. 

The dormitories for the orphan girls became too 
crowded, and the matter was made more embarrass- 
ing by taking in a large number of women, who were ac- 

IS4 



IN FAMINE LAND 

commodated in out-houses. The old Mission property 
was sold, and new dormitories for the boys and a new 
church were built, and were overcrowded from the be- 
ginning, necessitating the erection of additional dormi- 
tories. Early in May several cases of cholera occurred, 
which so alarmed the authorities that, after much cor- 
respondence and various consultations, we were with 
reluctance permitted, under certain conditions, to fix 
the maximum number of girls at two hundred, and the 
Widows' Home was to be removed altogether. Cholera 
growing worse and many deaths occurring, the whole 
of the women and girls were removed to a cholera 
camp, as already mentioned. Concerning this work Mr. 
Clancy, of Allahabad, who visited Ajmir in June, re- 
marks : 

" Miss Lilian Marks, assisted by Miss Tryon and Miss 
Dr. Emma Scott, has been doing nobly, A little over 
a month ago cholera broke out in the girls' school at 
Ajmir, and carried off twenty. One of the number was 
the matron, who had been a very faithful worker. The 
people living near the school became frightened, and the 
authorities compelled them to move out into the country 
two miles. There they had to live in tents, under the 
blazing sun, with a very scanty supply of water, yet 
none of these brave women even thought of running 
away. The cholera has at last subsided, and their work 
is progressing favorably. They are planning to take 
five hundred famine children into their schools at Ajmir. 
This will entail a tremendous cost, to house, clothe, feed, 
and educate them. They have sent away hundreds of 
children to other schools." 

They were no sooner back from the cholera camp than 
it was necessary to look up additional quarters for the 

155 



IN FAMINE LAND 

rapidly increasing famine refugees, and a large native 
serai, or inn, was rented at about twenty-seven dollars 
a month, and several hundred were sent there under the 
care of Miss Tryon. This inn was in the city, and 
opened into the public road. But the fear of cholera 
was upon every one, and on June 6th, Miss Marks wrote: 

" AjMiR, Rajputana, June 6, 1900. 

"Dear Dr. Scott, — Here I am again with another tale of 
woe. I am not discouraged, but perplexed. God closes our 
way here, but surely He has better things for us somewhere. 

"The Plindustani doctor informed me this morning that we 
cannot keep famine people in that serai. I took it for ten months 
at eighty rupees per month. They must let me keep the weavers 
there. But what am. I to do with our extra orphans? We 
cannot keep very many in Tilaunia, and Phalera does not seem 
a good place, as very few of the orphans are coming from that 
direction. The Jodhpur rajah closes our way. I am turning, or, 
rather, have turned, sixty-seven boys over to the Plomers to- 
day. The boys can sleep out-doors until the barrack is finished. 

"Yours sincerely, 

"L. E. Marks." 

On the 9th, Miss Scott (who had volunteered from 
Bindraban to spend her vacation in helping Miss Marks 
in famine work) wrote: 

"Miss Marks is going to see the civil surgeon about 
the serai. The authorities do not seem pleased to have 
the people gathered in it, and say it must be closed. 
Since it is taken for ten months, Miss Marks thinks it 
can be used for the weaving if she is prevented from 
using it for its present purpose. Mr. Smith thinks the 
best places down that road for an orphanage would be 
Sujat Road or Abu Road. Two of the workers yester- 
day, while bringing children from the station to the 
house, were attacked by an Arya and beaten, because 
they would not give the children to him. Miss Plomer 

156 



IN FAMINE LAND 

leaves Monday. She will bring sixty people up from 
Sujat Road on the evening train. Miss Marks is quite 
delighted at the prospect of Mr. Robinson being here. 
He can look after building, weaving, grain-shops, and 
kitchens, and give her leisure to gather in children for 
the new orphanage." 

The scare about being turned out of the serai passed 
away with the cholera, and on the 12th of June Miss 
Scott wrote again : 

"The serai has proved quite a success; there are over 
one hundred persons, ninety-two of them boys, and fifty 
to go from here to-day. 

"I meant to ask you when you were here what you 
thought of my staying for a while, till new help can 
come. If this isn't done at once, it will be too late in 
a short time, and the opportunity be gone. If you think 
best for me to stay, especially if there is a chance to 
open the new orphanage in or near Erinpura, will you 
kindly have my wheel sent me, or bring it when you 
come again? It is at the Deaconess Home. In going 
back and forth from the serai it will be very useful, if 
you think best for me to stay perhaps a few months 
longer. Money was granted by the society for an assist- 
ant in Bindraban (sixty rupees a month) , which has not 
been used, and is being held in reserve by the treasurer. 
It has been granted on condition that Miss Burman was 
not reappointed, but could be used under the present cir- 
cumstances, and even seventy-five rupees a month paid 
from now on for a doctor to take up the work there for 
a short time. Then, if she proved a proper person, the 
society could keep her permanently. Then I could 
itinerate or do anything I liked. Miss Burman is a 
better evangelist and preacher than I would ever be, 

157 



IN FAMINE LAND 

and can look after that part of the work, if there is some 
one else in the dispensary. If you think I would better 
come home now, and find some one else for here, I will 
be ready any time, only I like these boys very much." 

In order to understand Miss Scott's anxiety about 
Bindraban, it is necessary to give a brief history of her 
connection with that interesting and important place. 
Bindraban is a town of twenty-five thousand souls, seven 
miles north of Muttra, situated on the right bank of the 
river Jumna, and connected with Muttra by rail. It is 
a sacred city of the Hindus, being devoted to the mem- 
ory and worship of Krishna, the eighth incarnation of 
Vishnu. In it are a thousand temples, and it is said 
that some eight thousand widows make it their home. 
Dr. Scott took up the work there in 1897, being the first 
foreigner to live in the place. Consequently, there be- 
ing no European residence available, it became neces- 
sary to live in a native house. A small house was taken 
in the very heart of the town, on a narrow street, in 
which Miss Scott lived and carried on her work for a 
year. Out of deference to the religious scruples of the 
Brahmins, she became a vegetarian. She opened a dis- 
pensary, and treated all classes alike. In 1898 a bunga- 
low and dispensary building were completed, and the 
work expanded, not only in the town, but throughout 
the district. Miss Burman joined her in 1899. When 
the famine in Rajputana became severe. Miss Scott, as 
stated elsewhere, volunteered to help in the work, and 
continued to do so until she broke down, although she 
felt her responsibility for the work in Bindraban also. 
I was able to arrange for the medical work in Bindraban, 
and wrote and told her to remain, and she stayed on 
with the boys she loved so much, taking no thought for 
her own comfort or rest, but all through those awful 

158 



IN FAMINE LAND 

hot days and nights nursing and helping back into life 
men, women, and children, from the Sweeper to the 
Brahmin, desiring not "to be ministered unto, but to 
minister." 

The next thing that engaged the energy of the work- 
ers at Ajmir was the Christian Herald corn, which ar- 
rived in Bombay on the 26th of June, and was shipped 
to various centres at once. The Rev. E. F. Frease, sec- 
retary and treasurer of the Christian Herald Famine 
Relief Fund Committee, and also member of the Amer- 
ico-Indian Relief Committee, was in Bombay to meet 
the ship, and wrote me as follows : 

"Dear Dr. Scott, — The Quito arrived yesterdaj', and began 
clearing cargo to-day, which explains why I am here. It may 
be that some wagons will be started your way to-morrow, and 
if so, I'll try to wire you. 

"On my arrival here I found there was to be a meeting of 
the Americo-Tndian Relief Fund Executive Committee, for the 
distribution of funds. I had understood that applications were 
not to be considered until after the circulars, one of which I am 
now sending you, had been sent out, and hence had no written 
applications in. I, however, went before the executive com- 
mittee, and explained why our written applications were not 
ready, and asked permission to make them orally, to be covered 
by a written application to be made out later in the day. 

"Knowing your great need, I ventured to ask for 5000 rupees 
for you, that being the largest amount the executive committee 
can grant. The amount was granted, and I axn. sending in the 
written application for you as agreed. This will give time for 
any additional applications from you and your missionaries, 
to whom also I am sending circulars, to reach Bombay in time 
for the meeting of the general committee, the second Thursday 
in July. That committee will, of course, take into account the 
5000 rupees now granted in considering your applications. I 
hope I have not been presumptuous in putting in for you, but 
felt I, in a sense, represented all our famine work on this com- 
mittee as well as the Christian Herald Committee. 

"Sincerelv yours, 

"E. F. Frease." 



IN FAMINE LAND 

The Americo-Indian Relief Committee, referred to 
above, as to organization and object, and method of 
operation, is explained in its circular, issued on June 
15, 1900, which says: 

" In the latter part of April, 1900, when the Ecumen- 
ical Missionary Conference was held in New York, Ind- 
ian missionaries, who were present, called a special pub- 
lic meeting to awaken and promote interest in sending 
famine relief to India. As a result 'The India Famine 
Fund Committee of One Hundred,' well-known citizens 
of New York, was formed, with William E. Dodge, Esq., 
as chairman. Dr. E. R. L. Gould, secretary, and John 
Crosby Brown, Esq., treasurer." 

On June 9th a telegram from Mr. Dodge was received 
in Bombay, saying, " Promptly form Americo-Indian 
Relief Committee of Nine," and specified its constitu- 
tion. Accordingly, this committee was formed, and the 
object and scope of its work stated as follows: 

"This Americo-Indian Relief Committee desires and 
intends to work in co-operation with the committee of 
the Indian Famine Charitable Relief Fund and with 
the Christian Herald Relief Committee, and in con- 
junction with missionary and government relief, so as 
to avoid, as far as possible, overlapping in plans and 
grants. The secretary of the Indian Charitable Relief 
Committee and the chairman and the secretary of the 
Christian Herald Committee being members of this 
Americo-Indian Relief Committee, it is hoped that all 
overlapping may be avoided. 

"For the present this committee proposes mainly to 
confine itself to four objects: Relief for (i) orphans, and 
(2) farmers; (3) clothing, and (4) village relief." 

160 



IN FAMINE LAND 

The grain-shops were opened immediately upon the 
arrival of the com, and on July 17th Miss Marks wrote 
me: 

" The grain-shops are working. The police have given 
some trouble to-day, and want to stop the traffic. We 
think the bunyas are at the bottom of it. 

" Miss Scott is in Tilaunia and Miss Try on in the 
serai, so we really have two establishments. Can't you 
make room for more boys at Phalera? Isn't it a good 
time to write to the Commissioner for Orphans, and say 
that since we have been forced to open other institutions 
we can take two hundred girls and boys. If we decide 
that we do not want them all, we can find homes for 
them, Many missionaries are still writing for children. 
If we don't get them the Roman Catholics and the 
Bramo-Samaj are bound to. The Americo-Indian Com- 
mittee gave me 4000 rupees for medicines and clothing. 
Mr. Frease telegraphed me to put in my petition, so I 
did. All goes smoothly. I am trying to get more weav- 
ers to work." 

In June the Rev. J. W. Robinson, secretary and treas- 
urer of the Methodist-Episcopal Mission Famine Relief 
Committee, kindly wrote me that he thought he could 
give me some help in July, and we were looking forward 
to his coming after his visit to Gujarat. But Mr. Frease 
wrote me of his great need in the following letter: 

"Dear Dr. Scott, — J. W. Robinson came on the 3d inst., and 
it has been a great relief. I had expected him to remain a full 
month, but it appears he had made an arrangement with you 
which if carried out would take him away considerably earlier. 
I, therefore, write to ask you, if there is an}'- way possible, to 
release him from that, so he may remain here as long as 
possible. You will have heard of the death of T. M. Hudson, 
II 161 



IN FAMINE LAND 

and that J. W. Park has lost his eldest child, both from cholera. 
Besides which, the newly engaged English matron of the Nadiad 
Orphanage, in charge of Park, has also died of cholera. I am 
now much disquieted by a note just received from Park, saying 
he is down with something very like cholera, and I must be off 
to himi by the next train. 

"The fact is that either Park or Ward is liable to break at 
any time, and for Robinson to leave before the month is up 
would be very hard on us all. I believe you can get other help, 
and have no doubt you will release Robinson from going to 
your place. In great haste, Yours sincerely, 

"E. F. Frease." 

Of course, as much as we needed help, he was re- 
leased ; for, truly, famine work is full of hardships and 
dangers. The Gujarat workers suffered severely. The 
first to give way under the burden was T. M. Hudson. 
Mr. Fox writes : 

"There were signs of failing health before the day of 
final failure. But it seemed impossible to take rest. 
The evening before he died he had a social gathering 
of friends at his house. He was as bright and cheerful 
as any one among the company. About midnight the 
sickness came on; at eight o'clock in the morning he 
fell asleep. The next day after the death of Mr. Hud- 
son, Miss Brown, the assistant in the boys' orphanage at 
Nadiad, was taken down with cholera. In a few hours 
she passed away. Immediately after this, Willie, Mr. 
and Mrs. Park's eldest boy, was stricken with the dread 
disease. It was evident from the first attack that he 
could not live. He knew he was dying. He called the 
servants and told them he was dying, and urged them 
to meet him in heaven. Willie was only ten years old. 
He was a bright, happy, spirited boy, the friend of every- 
body. Mr. and Mrs. Ward were called to part with their 
little girl, Ada. In the morning she rode out with her 

162 



3 ffi 

o > 

f3- W 



J^-^ 






IN FAMINE LAND 

father, sitting in his lap, chatting brightly; late in the 
afternoon she was taken sick; before the next morning 
she was dead. Language cannot express the sorrow that 
came to these parents' hearts. All of them, without a 
word of murmuring, continued their work. 

"About two months after the death of Mr. Hudson 
Mr. Ward fell sick. He was sent to the hospital in 
Bombay. After two months of medical care and rest 
he was able to return to his work. It is worthy of men- 
tion that his wife carried on the work very efficiently 
during his sickness. 

"While Mr. Ward was still sick in Bombay, Mr. 
Frease was taken sick with fever. This proved to be a 
severe form of typhoid fever. He, too, was placed in 
the European Hospital, Bombay. For several weeks his 
life hung in the balance. He received every care from 
doctors and nurses. Then there came a change for the 
better. We have good reason now to hope that he will 
soon be able to resume his work." 

These were, indeed, trying times. What with the 
awful heat, the trying journeys into the villages to 
rescue the starving, the loss of sleep, the constant vigil- 
ance required, the awful, sickening sights, the menial 
service necessary to be done, the diseases prevalent — 
cholera, fever, small-pox, diarrhoea, dysentery, sore eyes, 
sore mouth, guinea -worm, paralysis, the association 
constantly with hopelessness, despondency, and gloom, 
all these things, with the drain on one's sympathy, were 
enough to break any one down. In Ajmir Dr. White- 
house, of the United Presbyterian Mission, was struck 
down with cholera in the prime of life. Miss Marks 
was often completely exhausted, and in September was 
driven to the hills. Miss Tryon was crowded with work 
in the serai, and at times was unfit for duty. Miss Scott 

163 



IN FAMINE LAND 

toiled on, almost a shadow, drinking impure water and 
without proper food, until she came down with fever at 
Tilaunia. Miss Hoge, who had generously left her work 
in Gonda, in Oudh, to help in the famine work in Ajmir, 
was left almost alone. Mr. and Mrs. Plomer, with the 
care of the boys' orphanage and the distribution of 
relief in the district, felt the awful burden. And through 
it all was the cry of the hungry for food and the wail 
of the dying. 



XVII 
TILAUNIA 

"No rain-drops fell, no dew-fraught cloud, at mom 
Or closing eve, creeps slowly up the vale; 
The withering herbage dies; among the palms 
The shrivelled leaves send to the sum^mer gale 
An autumn rustle." 

As you travel from Ajmir towards Agra, over the Raj- 
putana-Malwa railway, after passing the town of Kish- 
angarh you soon reach a little patch of land within the 
territory of the Kishangarh state, but belonging to the 
British government. There is a little railway-station, 
a goods shed, an open - sided building, covered with a 
corrugated iron roof for sheltering travellers, a long 
stretch of " siding," and a village of perhaps five hundred 
souls and emaciated bodies at the foot of a rocky mound, 
or hill, and fringing a wide expanse of sandy plain. 
That is Tilaunia. It is one of the centres from which 
we gave out famine relief. How we came to select it 
is this : One day, early in May, I was looking up places 
for storing grain, and was shown an old, abandoned 
cotton-press between the railway-station and the town 
at Tilaunia. There was a large room, one hundred feet 
long by forty wide, standing at the end of a yard, or 
"compound," perhaps four hundred feet square, the 
whole built of stone. The large room was without a 
roof, but most of the rafters were serviceable. Part of 
the old cotton-press was still standing in the centre of 



IN FAMINE LAND 

the room. There were some sheds and store-rooms in 
the corners of the enclosure, and on one side, opposite 
the large room, was a gate. As soon as I saw the old 
building I felt that, if available, we could utilize it in 
our famine work. We could put a thatch roof over the 
room, clean it up, and use it for a store-room, while one 
of the small rooms would do for a grain-shop, and the 
yard would serve as a dining-room and for a kitchen, 
which might be opened at once. The owner was seen. 
He was willing to rent it at a reasonable price. The 
bargain was closed, and I made preparations for its re- 
pair and speedy occupancy. The kitchen was started 
at once, and was a great success. In one corner room 
the food was cooked in a large caldron, and dished out 
to rows of hungry people seated on the ground. 

The Rev. Dennis Clancy, when on tour in Rajputana, 
took a deep interest in all forms of relief, and was espe- 
cially interested in the kitchens. He says: 

"I visited one of these kitchens at a place called 
Tilaunia, and saw over two hundred fed. For hours 
before the time to give out the food the people gather 
in a great crowd around the gate. The preachers and 
workers take advantage of this to give them religious 
instruction. It is really painful to see these poor creat- 
ures trying to sing. They seem to think that by singing 
and answering questions they are in a way doing some- 
thing to earn their food. When the gates were finally 
opened, the people rushed madly in. It was very diffi- 
cult to keep back those who had no tickets, and when the 
gate was closed there was a howling mob on the outside 
begging to be admitted. I could scarcely keep back the 
tears as I looked into their pitiful, emaciated, disappoint- 
ed faces. When those who had tickets were fed, what 
was left was given to those on the outside. Women 

;60 



IN FAMINE LAND 

came with little babies in their arms. One woman had 
a little baby only six days old. When the food was ready 
they made the people sit on the ground in rows, and 
when they were all served, Dr. Scott asked God's grace 
on the food, and the people ate as if they had had noth- 
ing for weeks. Most of them bring an earthen dish of 
some kind to receive the food. Sometimes people come 
without dishes, and to receive the food make a hole in 
the ground and put a cloth over it. They pick up every 
morsel of food given them. They get food but once a 
day, at most." 

The two hundred which Mr. Clancy saw soon multi- 
plied to a thousand, and our Christian cooks and waiters 
were kept busy feeding the people. When the com 
came, ten wagons, carrying two thousand bags, were 
sent to Tilaunia. But before the arrival of the maize, 
Ajmir became so overcrowded that it was necessary to 
divert the restored cotton-press building from its original 
purpose to that of a temporary home for famine waifs. 
Sheds were put up around the sides of the wall, the out- 
houses were cleaned up, the large room was put in order, 
and several hundred famine waifs, half-starved women, 
girls, and boys, rescued from death, were sent there to 
be cared for. Shops were taken for the corn in the 
town, tickets were issued to needy persons for the shops 
and kitchen, and hungry multitudes were fed daily. 

Miss Scott was sent to take charge of all this work at 
Tilaunia early in July, and she remained there until she 
broke down, in the middle of August. On July 6th she 
"wrote from Ajmir: 

"Mr. Smith writes that he has started three more 
kitchens, and wants a man to help him gather orphans. 
I was wondering if those boys who failed in their exam- 

167 



IN FAMINE LAND 

inations, Barnabas, Ruskin George, Nur Masih, or some 
of the others, perhaps, could not help in some of the 
work over here, if they have not positions already. They 
could assist in the grain-shops, or work under Mr. Smith 
to gather in the children. We could do such a lot if we 
had more workers.' We are going to work in good ear- 
nest now. Miss Tryon is to live in the serai and have 
charge of one hundred and fifty girls, and look after the 
weaving in the other serai. I am to go to Tilaunia, look 
after the kitchen, the grain-shop, and the weaving, and 
have headquarters for gathering in the starving, taking 
care of all the sick, etc., and have the Widows' Home, 
if they are turned out of here. A boy, or some inex- 
perienced person, could help in Tilaunia, and leave one 
of the preachers free to do some more important work, 
as collecting children or starting a kitchen in some other 
place. If it does not rain there will be need for several, 
I am afraid, before next season. Wouldn't John Little 
be a good hand to look after one? It would not hurt 
his work to go a little while where these people are starv- 
ing to death for want of some one to take food to them. 
"Please send some help. We need matrons and 
Bible women and school-teachers, etc. — in fact, almost 
any one will be useful. Miss Marks wants a good bearer, 
a Christian preferred. She says she could use Christian 
laymen in her rescue work if there are not preachers to 
be spared." 

The summer-school was in progress at Muttra in those 
days, and voluntary workers were called for; nine or 
ten promptly expressed themselves willing to go, and 
they were sent off to Ajmir by the next train. One old 
graybeard among them, Edward by name, had been a 
Christian for forty years ; another was an ex-policeman, 
a more recent convert from Mohammedanism; there 

t68 



IN FAMINE LAND 

were three women in the party, the wives of three of 
the men. All of them left places of employment to go 
out into the dreadful famine land, from which some 
never returned. On July 19th Miss Marks wrote me as 
follows : 

"The workers came thxS morning, and I was not a lit- 
tle surprised. However, I've sent every one of them to 
needy places. They thought they ought to have one 
day for rest, but I told them I had not had a rest for 
months. I sent to Tilaunia, Baldeo and Mary; to 
Phalera, Sarah and Robert ; to Miss Tryon's serai, Ed- 
ward and Jiwanie ; under S. O. Smith, to gather children, 
Kalekhan and Nanhe ; Charlie Silas to assist here to send 
to out-stations for children and to distribute thread to 
weavers. I could use several others. The grain-shops 
are doing a flourishing business. Mr. Robinson writes 
that he will not come till the end of the month. I am 
helping twelve farmers to sow their crops, and when the 
crops are harvested they are to give me a chance to buy 
cheap, and they will return some of the money. The 
assistant commissioner seemed very glad of my offer 
to help them, and he is to send twelve worthy men to 
me, 

" Mr. Smith was in and took two hundred bags of grain 
yesterday. He pays the freight. He is feeding over one 
thousand people at five centres, and as he goes up and 
down the line he inspects them. I suppose you have 
no object-ons if it reaches the needy through reliable 
sources. Yes, Dr. Scott let Ran Bahadur have grain 
for poor Christians. I also asked them to send some 
from Phalera. Anthony will see that the poor Chris- 
tians get it. Thread is so expensive that this weaving 
is a losing business. It helps to keep the people from 
being pauperized, however." 

169 



IN FAMINE LAND 
On the 2 1 St of July I received this from Miss Marks: 

"The shops here and at Tilaunia are besieged by a 
regular mob from mom till night, who scream and cry 
and push and beat one another to get to the shop. 
What a sight it is ! No rain, and no clouds even. I got 
in fourteen boys yesterday, and thirty-seven to-day, and 
more are to come to-night. I hope you can arrange for 
two hundred boys at Phalera soon. Very few girls 
come. I enclose a letter received from Mr. Smith this 
morning. He thinks we could open an orphanage at Pa- 
lanpur, the other side of Abu Road, and there is no mis- 
sion work there. It is a Mohammedan state, and the Na- 
wab is liberal, so I hear. What opportunities these days ! 
I am ready to open two or three more orphanages. The 
money could be gathered, I am sure, and the workers 
found. I am not quite out of my senses. I have hired 
a book-keeper at twenty rupees a month, and that will 
enable me to give more attention to the thousand and 
one other things that come up. My building gets on 
slowly for lack of water. No water has come in Ana 
Sagar Lake. The work at Tilaunia became very heavy. 
The kitchen fed many hundreds daily. From morning 
until night Mohan Lai and Parshadi Lai, with their as- 
sistants, were kept busy measuring grain for the hungry 
villagers ; the waifs required much care ; many of them 
were much emaciated and afflicted with disease. Fam- 
ine-stricken weavers were given weaving to do. These 
poor weavers, who were out of both materials and 
customers, were helped to set up their rude little 
hand-looms at their own homes, thread was furnished 
to them, and the cloth purchased from them when 
woven." 

On the 23d I received this letter from Miss Scott: 

170 



V. 




S3 




#^* 







^^•^yd 



""^ 



IN FAMINE LAND 

"Dear Dr. Scott, — The grain is going so fast we are be- 
ginning to wonder whether it will not be best to keep some of 
it, as it won't last long at the rate it is going. A regular mob! 
It takes three or four men with clubs to keep the people away. 
It is not sold in larger quantities than eight seers to any one 
person, and yet the sales to-day alone amounted to 200 rupees. 
Since a week the proceeds have been over 1000 rupees. It keeps 
the men busy giving out, and the poor pastor isn't very well 
anyhow. The men are very much concerned about the piece 
of land for sale here. The owner is anxious to know, as he 
wishes to dispose of it some other way if we don't take it. The 
land is good, well situated, cheap, and everything that could 
be desired, if you want to buy in a small place. Three hun- 
dred rupees will do. We hear Dr. Ashe is going to live at 
Phalera. 

"Your volunteers were gladly welcomed, and are busy. They 
have gone to work in good earnest. Please let us know about 
the grain soon, and the land also. 

"I let Ran Bahadur, of Rup Nagar, have two camel-loads of 
grain for the poor Christians in his charge. That was proper, 
as I understood it was to be sent from the place where it was 
stored to places where we have work in the villages. But 
Mohan Lai said the order was to give to only those who are 
able to come for it themselves; but I was wondering what 
was to become of the hundreds who were not able to come. 

"Mohan Lai sends his salaams. I like him very much. 

"Yours sincerely, 

" Emma Scott." 

Miss Marks wrote me again on the 30th : 

" We have cholera in Tilaunia, I just came home last 
night, and return this morning. We are overcrowded, 
so please get Phalera ready for more boys at once, so 
that I can remove them as soon as this outbreak is over. 
Our hands are full. Miss Scott and I are dead tired 
nursing the sick. We have had a good many deaths in 
Tilaunia lately : Thursday, four ; Friday, four ; Saturday, 
three ; Sunday three, and I don't know how many more 
there will be this morning. Not much sickness here. 

171 



IN FAMINE LAND 

Pray for us. I wish some one were here who could look 
after the grain- shops. I can't do any more than I am 
doing. I am so tired." 

When I visited Tilaunia I found Miss Scott living in 
a little out-house with two rooms, about ten feet square, 
and a thatch-covered veranda, in the corner of the yard 
where were crowded several hundred half-starved creat- 
ures, many of them exceedingly repulsive, emaciated, 
and diseased. There was fever, and there had been 
cholera. She had no cook, and was being waited on 
by a little famine boy, who served her, as they all did, 
with a love and devotion which was touching, and if 
skill and ability had been commensurate, there would 
have been nothing left to be desired. As it was, there 
was much. It was hot, and the whole place- was un- 
sanitary. The sights were enough to sicken any one. 
But love for humanity can rise above all these things. 
Miss Scott remained, because she felt it was her duty 
to live among and try and save these dying people. But 
it was more than even she could endure. 

Miss Marks wrote from Tilaunia on August ist: 

"Well, we are still in the land of the living. Only 
two new cases down this morning, and no deaths 
yesterday. I have sent Dr. Emma Scott into Ajmir 
to rest. 

"The Kishangarh prime - minister wants us to open 
a dispensary in Kishangarh. I've intended for a long 
time to open medical work there if I can get a medical 
worker somewhere. I'll oversee the business once a 
week. I think he will give us a grant of money, medi- 
cines, and a house, free. Since the grain came he seems 
ready to oblige in anything, and I mean to strike while 
the iron is hot. I think I can arrange to get our thread 

172 



IN FAMINE LAND 

for weaving a little cheaper through him. Can't you 
get Phalera ready right away for a few more boys ? This 
has been full for some time, and cannot possibly accom- 
modate any more. 

"We have nearly two hundred more boys for you, 
but we need an extra number to fill vacancies. Many 
are weak and sick, and have sore mouths, which are 
very infectious, and the famine diarrhoea is also catch- 
ing. Though they seem to get well, and look quite 
strong, the first thing we know they are down again. 
The boys that have come recently are very weak, and 
need much care and attention. The state of the sheds 
where they sleep, and the yard, is indescribable in the 
morning. A lot of weavers have work, but it is hard 
to find any one who knows how to weave blankets, 
especially in these parts." 

On the 24th of August she wrote: 

"Dr. Emma Scott has fever, and I am taking her to 
Ajmir for a change. Miss Hays will take her place." 

Next day she wrote : 

"Dr. Scott has strong fever to-day, and has had for 
several days. I feel worried about her, as she has 
typhoid symptoms." 

On the 3d of September she wrote again: 

" To-day the doctor has pronounced Miss Scott's fever 
enteric. We have a trained nurse, and she shall have 
the best care we can give her. He thinks that by the 
25th of this month she may be able to go to the hills. 
After enteric she will have to take a long rest. In the 

^73 



IN FAMINE LAND 

present emergency Miss Hays is a godsend. She does 
nicely at Tilaunia." 

Long weeks of anxious watching passed. Then came 
the slow recovery and the necessary vacation home. 
Sickness follows famine. On November ist, Miss Marks 
wrote : 

"I am overwhelmed. So many sick and dying — at 
least two hundred sick people on my hands, and no one 
that knows enough to give a dose of medicine. There 
are so many things to attend to besides the sick, yet for 
the past two weeks I have not been able to do much 
but compound and dispense medicines. Could you get 
me an Agra medical assistant till these famine peo- 
ple get into a more healthy condition ? I cannot stand 
this much longer. In the two serais, and here and at 
Tilaunia I have lost at least fifty this week, mostly 
from famine malarial fever." 

And so the work went on until the houses were ready 
at Phalera, and the coming of the rains and more pros- 
perous times rendered grain - shops and kitchens un- 
necessary. When the cold weather came on, from Ti- 
launia hundreds of blankets and suits of clothing were 
distributed to the poor villagers. After the waifs were 
sent away to Phalera and Ajmir, and the kitchens and 
grain-shops were closed, the old building was used for 
weavers, who are still doing a good work there, helped 
by their friends, who rescued them when "the famine 
was sore in the land." 

More than a year has passed since the last of the fam- 
ine-stricken left Tilaunia and the kitchens and grain- 
shops were closed and the rescue work ceased ; but in 

174 



IN FAMINE LAND . 

November of the present year a great thanksgiving ser- 
vice was held there in a large tent, attended by a thou- 
sand people, eight hundred of them famine waifs, now 
strong and well and happy, who gave expression to 
their grateful feelings in their own quaint and hearty 
manner, with bursts of song and shouts of praise. Look- 
ing into the bright, upturned faces, one could not help 
feeling that all the trouble and expense of saving these 
people have been repaid a thousandfold. 



XVIII 
PHALERA 

"The tongue of the sticking child cleaveth to the roof of his 
mouth for thirst." — Lamentations, iv., 4. 

When we commenced to feed the starving at the 
kitchens, convenient centres were selected to which the 
poor people could gather and where there could be 
rigid supervision and inspection. At first we cooked a 
limited amount of food in front of the native pastor's 
house, just at the end of the small village of Phalera, 
but the number of applicants so rapidly increased, arid 
as it was annoying to the people of the town to have so 
many famine - stricken coming together daily at that 
place, we realized that a removal was inevitable, and 
yet it became a very grave question what to do in the 
emergency. No one seemed able or willing to help us. 
It so happened that next door to the pastor's house 
lived his landlord, a Parsee, by the name of Prestonji, 
who had leased some land from a Hindu for cultivation. 
Hearing our story, he very generously came to me and 
said I could have land from him upon which we could 
erect temporary sheds for storage of grain and a place 
for a kitchen. The place proved to be just the locality 
desired, within a convenient distance of the mission- 
house and railway-station, and yet far enough away to 
obviate any inconvenience to the residents of the town. 

There we erected mud-walled houses, and covered 
them with a thatch roof, and soon had our kitchen in 

176 



IN FAMINE LAND 

working order. When the kitchen was first started 
there was also opened a training-school, into which poor 
men and women who were capable of being taught an 
elementary knowledge of books were gathered. The 
members of this school, as well as their teachers, gave 
gratuitous help in carrying on the kitchen, which grew 
into large proportions. From two hundred the numbers 
ran up to four hundred, and then to six and eight hun- 
dred, until finally one thousand, and twelve hundred 
were fed daily. These poor people came about eight 
o'clock in the morning, and sat in long, double rows, 
waiting patiently for an hour or two until the food was 
ready to be served. The majority of those admitted 
were women and children, each of whom was provided 
with a ticket, on which were number, name, and village, 
and the dates of the month, from which each date, as 
it fell due, was deleted when presented by the applicant 
to a qualified inspector. Each adult was given a pound 
and a half of cooked wheat, or corn-meal mush, and 
children were fed in proportion to age and requirements. 
It was often necessary to give the children specially 
prepared food. Many of the people were very much 
emaciated when they first came to us. Some were so 
weak that they remained near the place all the time, 
being unable to walk to their village and back again 
daily. Some died with food in their hands. In cooking 
for so many, it often happened that the untrained cooks 
and waiters did not thoroughly cook and properly serve 
the food, and many of the people, especially the children, 
were unable to digest the mess that was served out to 
them. 

I shall never forget a sight I witnessed one day when 

the people were being fed. A poor village woman had 

managed to crawl to the kitchen with her starving little 

child. She was too weak to get into the line, and lay 

" 177 



IN FAMINE LAND 

on the ground a few paces off. When the food was 
served, one of the bearers carried her some of the mush 
and placed it on one corner of her scanty clothing. She 
was just able to carry a morsel to her mouth, when she 
died with some of the food still in her mouth, and the 
little, emaciated baby lying beside her. She was soon 
carried away and buried in the sand of an adjoining 
field, and the child was taken to the mission-house and 
cared for, but the poor little thing had been too long 
without food, and soon went to join its mother. 

The suffering of the little children was terrible. It 
was a very common thing to see children five and six 
years of age wandering about in the fields or on the 
road or at the railway- stations, pitifully crying for food, 
or lying under trees, asleep, with no one to care for them. 
Their parents had gone in search of food, or more prob- 
ably had died of starvation or disease induced by famine. 
I remember one midnight at Phalera, as I was on my 
way to the station, I heard a child crying most pitifully 
in the dark. It was so dark that I could see no one, 
but the voice was so full of distress that at the risk of 
missing my train I searched for the child under the 
trees. Under a large shisam tree I found an emaciated 
little girl, all alone. I said to her: 

"What is the matter, little one?" 

"My eyes hurt." 

"Where is your mother, child?" 

"I don't know." 
, " Have you no one to help you?" 

"No one." 

"How long have you been here?" 

"A week." 

"Why have you come here?" 

"I am hungry." 

I told her she should have food, but as I went on down 

178 



IN FAMINE LAND 

the road I could hear the poor Httle thing crying with 
pain and hunger, alone under the shisam tree. 

The reader will remember that on Saturday, the 7th 
of April, I unexpectedly met the Rev. W. W. Ashe, 
M.D., at Marwar Junction, and that we visited the Jodh- 
pur state famine relief camp at that place, and spent 
part of the day at Biawar. He returned to his work at 
Aligarh, and my mind was occupied with the great prob- 
lem of the hour — how best to distribute the funds com- 
mitted to our care. While thinking over this I received 
the following letter, dated at Aligarh on the 4th of May : 

"Dear Dr. Scott, — Since my trip through the famine dis- 
trict in Rajputana, the dreadful misery and suffering I saw- 
have not ceased to haunt me by day and by night. I went to 
see famine and I saw it. After leaving you I saw most heart- 
rending sights. The suffering in the native states is most 
acute, and in some places very little is being done for the 
people. I inqtiired about the distress from several native 
officers, but they all denied that the people were dying of 
starvation. . . . 

"At Marwar, where I met you, I walked a hundred paces 
away from the station and picked up a human skull with some 
of the sinews still intact, as I showed you. I saw one poor 
woman lying within ten feet of the railway, unable to rise, and 
there was no one near to help her. At Jaipur, where the train 
stopped, a crowd of emaciated little children thronged the 
platform begging, many of them too weak to stand long at a 
time. A man came along and kicked them out of the way as 
if they were a pack of dogs. At one place, among the crowd was 
a wee bit of a girl hardly able to stand. I gave her an extra pice, 
and as the train moved off the elder ones rushed upon her like 
so many hounds and snatched the pice away from her. I wept. 
Who would not? Survival of the fittest! If I possessed a 
lakh of rupees I would ask for no greater pleasure than to 
distribute it to those poor famishing people. 

' ' I trust the committee wdll see fit to give you a large sum for 
Rajputana, for I am sure there is not a more needy place to be 
found. Yours sincerely, 

"W. W. Ashe." 
179 



IN FAMINE LAND 

As the work at Phalera became more heavy, the 
kitchen, training - school, and weaving, with outside 
work in the villages requiring much thought and daily- 
supervision, I was anxious to secure some one to take 
charge of the work. My thought turned to Dr. Ashe. 
I wrote to him, and the result was that he gladly gave 
up his month's leave, to which he was entitled, to do 
famine work at Phalera. Subsequently he was relieved 
from his connection with the dairy-farm at Aligarh, and 
he and Mrs. Ashe joined us, as permanent workers, on the 
5th of September. In the mean time Dr. Ashe had given 
most valuable assistance. In addition to the kitchen 
and other work an orphanage for boys was started, and 
more than two hundred were gathered in, requiring to 
be fed and clothed and constantly attended, many of 
them being in a sad plight. It was a great comfort to 
have a doctor in charge of the orphanage. On the 6th 
of August Dr. Ashe wrote : 

"We fed 400 this morning at the kitchen, and some 
were turned away. No rain yet. Wheeler's dog brought 
a scapula of some poor victim, and laid it at my door 
last night." 

On the 9th, again: 

" Yesterday we fed 620, besides the boys. To-day 715 
got a morsel. There were a thousand people present. 
It is impossible to feed them all. Four wagons of the 
corn have come, and the rest will reach us to-day. Ten 
or twelve carts are busy bringing it up. No rain yet. 
It is dreadfully hot to-day. Will go to Merta Road after 
I get things started here." 

Merta Road is the junction where the line branches 

180 



IN FAMINE LAND 

off to Bikanir, and is within the limits of the Bhartpur 
state. The town of Merta Hes some distance away 
from the station. As it was a needy field, we decided to 
open a grain-shop there. 

On the 13th, after his visit to Merta Road, he wrote 
me as follows: 

"I have just returned from Merta Road, where I 
rented two store-rooms and a room for a man to live in. 
I took Masih Dass with me from Makrana to let him 
see the place. He does not seem happy to go there. 
The com must be sent at once, to save damage. De- 
pending on what you said about him, I will send him 
to see to unloading it. Please let me know what ar- 
rangements are to be made about money. I have got 
in over two hundred blankets, better than the Bikanir 
ones. Am having them made in the villages. They 
will be somewhat cheaper than the sample you brought. 
We are too short-handed to manage a thousand people. 
If we had an enclosure it would be much easier to man- 
age them." 

On the 23d he wrote: 

" I returned from Merta Road, where I went to get 
the grain- shop in operation. Daud is now settled there. 
The situation is very critical up that way. The little 
rain that fell has caused a lot of sickness. The people 
drink from the filthy puddles, take the cholera, and die. 
At this place the distress is growing worse daily." 

During the most of August I remained at Phalera, 
allowing Dr. Ashe to return to AHgarh. The manu- 
facture of blankets and warm clothing for the famine- 
stricken, who would otherwise for want of them perish 

181 



IN FAMINE LAND 

during the rains and in the cold season, occupied our 
attention. A generous donation from the Christian 
Herald fund of 7656 rupees enabled me to push the man- 
ufacture of woollen blankets with vigor. I found I could 
make a serviceable blanket for a rupee. I stated this 
fact to Mr. Frease, secretary and treasurer of the Chris- 
tian Herald fund, and from him received the following 
reply : 

" Dear Dr. Scott, — In yours of the 6th inst. you say 
you are making four thousand blankets for the cold 
weather. You have by this time received the list show- 
ing the distribution for one hundred thousand blankets, 
being provided by the Christian Herald fund. These 
blankets we are having made by famine labor wherever 
possible, under the direction of the missionaries, and most 
of them are being made of heavy cotton, and at a cost not 
to exceed one rupee each. I think that the committee 
will be very glad to purchase from you the four thousand 
you say you are already making, and as many more as 
you can make, up to, say, 7656, the number which will 
come to you according to the distribution mentioned 
above, if you can make them at the price given. This 
would enable you to produce the entire number of 
blankets assigned to you by famine labor, and would 
avoid transportation charges, and give you an article 
usually used by your people. If you can undertake to 
make the above number, please let me know immediately 
by wire, if you wish, and I will send you my official 
check for 7656 rupees, covering the number and com- 
pleting your grant from the committee for blankets." 

When the Christian Herald corn arrived, two thou- 
sand bags, containing two bushels each, were stored in 
the mission-house, and a shop was opened in the town, 

182 



IN FAMINE LAND 

while distribution was made in the surrounding villages. 
Two hundred bags were sent to the shop at Merta Road 
and a like number on to Bikanir. At all our shops we 
sold the corn in small quantities, at a fixed rate of four- 
teen seers, or twenty-eight pounds, to the rupee, to all 
who were needy but able to purchase, and gave to those 
who had no means of paying. To guard against impo- 
sition, grain was only given to those who had been sup- 
plied with our numbered tin tags and corresponding 
dated tickets. In spite of the most scrupulous care, 
however, some would appear several times on the same 
day and draw the allowance, until detected and ex- 
cluded. 

What with blankets and corn stored in the mission- 
house, there was but one room left in which to live, 
and even that was shared with countless flies, mos- 
quitoes, moths, lizards, snakes, and dogs. 

When Dr. Ashe returned he had his hands full. What 
with orphanage, industrial work, kitchens, grain-shops, 
and training-school, there was enough to keep him busy. 
A kitchen had been kept up at Naraina, a village a few 
miles away. The grain-shop at Merta Road was doing 
a good work. The blankets were coming in almost 
daily. About two thousand were made at Bikanir. The 
kitchens were kept open till the first week in October, 
by which time there was no further need. Dr. Ashe 
succeeded in sub -renting some land, and immediately 
proceeded to erect suitable buildings thereon for orphan- 
ages for both boys and girls. 

This, in addition to the other work mentioned above, 
fully occupied the time and attention of Dr. Ashe, for 
the buildings have been erected under peculiar difficul- 
ties. Workmen proved inefficient and slow. The walls 
of the boys* orphanage were no sooner up than part of 
them fell down again. The corrugated iron roof was no 

183 



IN FAMINE LAND 

sooner on than a storm blew it off. But the work has 
gone on. Thousands have been saved from starvation, 
and hundreds of children, rescued, fed, and clothed, are 
being trained. On February 7th, just before leaving 
for home, broken down under the long, hard work done 
during the famine, Miss Marks reported as follows: 

"The Phalera girls' orphanage will be ready for oc- 
cupancy by the end of this month. I still do some res- 
cue work. We have taken in forty-seven the past month 
— fifteen girls, four women, and twenty -eight boys. They 
are very emaciated and weak. Over ninety -nine thou- 
sand rupees, or $33,000, have passed through my hands 
for relief work during the year. I have had to render 
an account to two famine committees, and have all 
accounts audited. It has been an awful strain to feel 
that I was responsible for the proper disposal of every 
cent. Money came from Canada, France, England, Scot- 
land, Japan, India, South Africa, and the Straits Settle- 
ments. So, often this year, when I have seen that we 
needed certain things very much, and wondered where 
they would come from, some one would write, saying 
they were sending these very things. It has seemed so 
wonderful." 



XIX 

FORMS OF RELIEF 

"I will call for the com." — Ezekiel, xxxvi., 29. 

The various forms of relief put in operation during 
the famine were so numerous that it would be difficult 
to give a detailed account of each. The committee al- 
lowed large liberty in these matters, provided that (i) 
the people needing relief were reached, and (2) the work 
was done under strict supervision, so that there would 
be neither waste nor theft. It was impossible for the 
imperial relief to reach all who needed it, and often the 
relief camps were so distant from the famine-stricken, 
and the conditions upon which help was given were such, 
that they were not succored. The people of India, owing 
partly to many centuries of oppression and poverty, 
and partly to their religious belief in a fixed destiny, 
are a long-suffering and patient people, enduring quietly 
the greatest wrongs without a murmur, and pining away 
with hunger and making no sign. Sometimes native 
subordinates were not sympathetic, and carried on the 
work in an official and perfunctory way, not calculated 
to inspire in the poor people a belief in " the brotherhood 
of man . ' ' Sometimes ' ' the minimum wage ' ' meant star- 
vation and death. Anyhow, there was a large margin 
left to be met by private charity, and our workers were 
ever finding out needy ones quietly suffering in out- 
of-the-way places. We had men and women posted at 
convenient centres in Rajputana, whose duty it was to 

185 



IN FAMINE LAND 

find out all cases of need and report them, and a special 
fund was set apart for this work. In this way many 
were saved from starvation. People were directed to 
the nearest relief works, or given tickets which would 
admit them to our grain-shops or kitchens, where they 
could get help. But the most of our relief fell under 
five heads — viz., grain-shops, kitchens, rescue work, or- 
phanages, and industrial work. A word may be said 
about each of these, as operated in Rajputana and else- 
where. 

I . Grain-shops. In Rajputana there were grain-shops 
at Pisangun, Bir, Ajmir, Tilaunia, Phalera, Merta Road, 
and Bikanir. These were really distributing centres, 
from which grain was sent by rail, on carts and camels 
and by coolies, into the interior. More than twenty 
thousand bushels of grain were thus distributed. Our 
rule was to sell to all who could buy at a fixed rate of 
twenty-eight pounds to the rupee, never giving more 
than the maximu.m amount of a rupee's worth to any 
one person, and requiring those near at hand to appear 
daily for their dole. For the very poor we furnished 
the meal, already prepared for cooking, free, and some- 
times a little fuel also. The opening of these shops had 
a twofold beneficial effect. In the first place, it fed 
the hungry people; and in the second place, by imder- 
selling the corn-dealers, we brought down the price of 
grain in some places. In the account of our work at 
Ajmir and Tilaunia we have seen how clamorous the 
poor people were to buy the maize, and that the men 
were under the necessity of standing with sticks to keep 
the villagers from mobbing the shops. When the sales 
accumulated the money was used to buy other grain, 
and so the shops were kept open as long as there was 
need. 

In Gujarat Mr. Frease and his associates opened grain 

i86 



IN FAMINE LAND 

depots, 'which were very useful. The editor of the Indian 
Witness, who visited Gujarat in May, wrote as follows: 

" Mr. Frease and his missionary associates deserve the 
highest praise for the effective plans set in operation to 
meet the needs of the trying situation. First, they re- 
solved to establish food-grain depots at several stations, 
where the people could obtain grain at actual cost, or, if 
necessary, as it was found to be, at a small loss. Capital 
to allow of the purchase of grain on favorable terms 
was appealed for and received, although not to the ex- 
tent that could be desired. For a considerable time 
grain was sold at the mission depot to all comers, in 
small quantities, of course, to each purchaser, but after 
a time it proved that the funds available would not ad- 
mit of this. So it was found necessary to restrict the 
sale of grain to Christians, who, as the famine period 
advanced, began to show proofs of the fact that they 
were trying to exist on insufficient food. About four 
hundred tons of maize, or forty railway wagon-loads, 
have been sold at these mission depots. Many thou- 
sands of villagers have been relieved in their own vil- 
lages, besides those on relief works. Large numbers 
have travelled twenty miles for a week's supply, be- 
cause, as they explained, 'the difference between the 
rate at which the corn was sold by the missionaries and 
the local bazaar rate was just the difference between 
starvation and life.' " 

2. Kitchens. Kitchens were opened before grain- 
shops were started, but after the maize came the shops 
were a great aid to the kitchens, as the corn-meal was 
used in making the mush which was fed to the patrons 
of the kitchens. There were many of these kitchens at 
centres right across Rajputana from Raho to Bikanir. 

187 



IN FAMINE LAND 

The largest ones were at Tilaunia, Naraina, and Phalera. 
Here many hundreds were fed daily. Our rule was to 
give a pound and a half to an adult male, a pound to a 
wom^an, and lesser amounts to children in proportion 
to their age. Any one eligible to draw must have a 
properly filled -in and signed kitchen- ticket, a specimen 
of which is herewith given: 



I 


23456789 


10 


II 


12 


13 


14 
15 
16 

17 
18 

19 




No 


Name 


Village 


Amount , . . . 




31 


30 29 28 27 26 25 24 


23 


22 


21 


20 



Our kitchens were run upon a somewhat different plan 
from that of the government. As a rule, the govern- 
ment kitchens were opened in connection with relief 
works for children and other dependants who were unfit 
to go on the works. The famine committee of 1898 
recommended kitchens especially for children. They 
say: 

" But as a general rule we are in favor of the kitchen 
system in the case of children. In the case of adults 
the existence of caste or other prejudice may undoubtedly 
prevent many persons requiring relief from accepting 
it in the shape of cooked food, but with young children 
we think this is true only of a fev/ tracts or particular 
castes. The experience of the recent famine, and the 
evidence we have taken on the subject, confirm us in the 

188 



IN FAMINE LAND 

belief that in the great majority of cases parents will not 
object to sending their young children to kitchens, al- 
though it might be they would not be willing to accept 
such relief themselves. In scarcities, or at the beginning 
of famine, the cash or grain-allowance system may be 
found convenient and unobjectionable for children as 
well as adults; but if it is considered necessary to en- 
force a test, owing to the excessive numbers of persons 
attracted, claiming to be dependants, or if it is found 
that sufficient relief is not afforded to children, then the 
kitchen system should be substituted. In severe famine, 
we think, it will always be necessary to introduce the 
kitchen system for children; but in order to guard 
against the possibility of deserving persons, who from 
caste or other prejudice cannot accept cooked food, 
being excluded from all relief, although they really 
require it, we think that when the kitchen system is 
introduced discretion should be allowed to the officer 
in charge of the work to exempt from the obligation of 
accepting cooked food persons who from caste feeling 
or prejudice or local status cannot reasonably be ex- 
pected to submit to such a form of relief, and to give 
such persons either a money dole or an uncooked ration, 
preferably the latter." ^ 

But not having extensive relief works nor a large staff 
of workers, it was found that we could reach the cause 
of all the suffering and relieve it more directly by giving 
cooked food to the very poor. If we gave them money it 
would perhaps be stolen or some of them would spend 
it for opium. If we gave everybody a grain dole, some 
would have no fuel with which to cook it. We never 

* The late Famine Commission (1901) are of the opinion that 
"gratuitous relief is in every way more effective and successfully 
administered by doles than by cooked food." 

189 



IN FAMINE LAND 

had much trouble on the ground of caste. Many high- 
caste adults joined our kitchens and ate as heartily as 
the Sweepers ; but, of course, we discriminated in favor 
of women and children, and always noticed if they were 
needy or not. 

3. Rescue Work. This was carried on from beginning 
to end. When the famine commenced I instructed the 
whole staff, from Bikanir to Sujat Road, to be on the 
lookout for starving orphans or abandoned children who 
could be rescued from death, and often worse than death. 
A volume could be written concerning the rescue work 
alone. In this Miss Marks and Mr. Smith took a deep 
interest. Nearly three thousand waifs were thus gath- 
ered in. Daropti Das, the wife of a Christian worker at 
Makrana, was the means of rescuing hundreds. This 
good woman lived on one meal a day during the famine, 
that she might have something to give to her starving 
neighbors. During the hot weather these rescue trips 
to the villages were made with great personal discom- 
fort, and often with danger. The heat was awful in 
May and June, and yet at that time the need was the 
greatest. At one place our man was imprisoned under 
a false charge of kidnapping,^ at another the man in 
charge of rescued waifs was beaten. Often the children 
were too weak to reach the place of refuge. Children 
died in the trains and at the railway-stations when being 
removed to rescue camps. Nor did an emaciated body 
always reform the disposition. The Bhils are notorious 
thieves. Miss Marks was bringing some starving Bhil 
children home, and having to sleep on the platform of 
a small railway- station, she gathered the children about 

* The late Famine Commission have expressed themselves as 
strongly opposed to missionaries and others removing deserted 
children from the famine districts, and advise that "deserted children 
should not be made over" to them except as a last resort. 

190 



IN FAMINE LAND 

her, and placed her bag of money under her pillow, 
and went to sleep. When she awoke at four o'clock 
in the morning to take the train, neither boys nor 
bag were to be found. They had stolen it and de- 
parted. 

4. Orphanages. Out of the famine grew four orphan- 
ages, two for boys and two for girls, in Rajputana. 
Nearly eight hundred children were gathered into these. 
Many of them either ran away or died, and others took 
their places. Besides these a widows' home was opened. 
For these orphans and widows buildings had to be 
erected, which required time and money. At Ajmir 
and at Phalera, where our orphanages and Widows' Home 
have been established, the dormitories and other build- 
ings are completed, and the children and widows are 
being trained. Nor are we alone in rescue work and in 
founding orphanages and widows' homes. The Rev. J. 
Anderson Brown, secretary of the Presbyterian Mission 
in Rajputana, reported from Biawar that at the end of 
April they had received 1226 children, and had ninety- 
six widows under their care, and the numbers would 
have been considerably larger but for an outbreak of 
cholera. He says : 

" Many of the little ones who came to us were in a very 
emaciated and weakly condition, and notwithstanding 
all our care we have lost upward of six hundred, of 
whom about a fourth died of cholera. On the 31st of 
May there were 1507 orphans at Biawar, and in all 2400 
had been rescued from starvation, but 898 had died 
from exhaustion or cholera." 

Of course, in other places, as in Gujarat and Central 
India, thousands were thus rescued and brought into 
orphanages. Mrs. Lawson writes from Aligarh: 

191 



IN FAMINE LAND 

"The recent famine has left us a heritage of over 
seven hundred and fifty orphans and widows. These, 
in addition to our four hundred orphans of the previous 
famine, make a community of about one thousand one 
hundred and fifty. Of these, three hundred are girls, 
four hundreds and fifty boys, and three hundred and 
fifty or more widows, with their fifty babies." 

5. Industrial Work. We aimed from the beginning 
to give work to all for whom work was available. A 
number of poor people were employed at Ajmir in con- 
nection with our building operations and in grading the 
"compound." At Phalera I started shoemaking, sup- 
plying the shoemakers with materials, and they turned 
out some very good native shoes. Some carpenters, also, 
were given work. Those learning in the training-schools 
had to earn their support by steady work in. the schools 
and by giving gratuitous help in the grain -shops and at 
the kitchens; but the most extensive help given was 
to weavers, who were supplied with thread and were 
thus enabled to turn out very good cotton and woollen 
cloth on their own inexpensive and exceedingly clumsy 
looms. We expended more than ten thousand rupees 
in thus helping weavers, from whom we purchased the 
cloth to give to the needy people in the villages. At 
Sambhar and at Bikanir, especially, this form of relief 
proved very successful. 

In Gujarat Mr. E. F. Frease says, concerning his weav- 
ing: 

" From the beginning of October to the end of January 
we kept three hundred and fifty looms in comparatively 
constant motion, thus supporting one thousand seven 
hundred and fifty people. Since then we have been able 
to work some six hundred looms, supporting three thou- 
sand of our people. With sufficient capital we could 

192 



IN FAMINE LAND 

with our present staff more than double our weaving 
operations, and, as we are anxious to do, employ the 
non -Christian neighbors of the Christian weavers now 
employed. 

"The cheap grain sales and the weaving operate side 
by side, and most of the pay for weaving is given in 
grain, though cash is given when asked." 

When the grain-shops and kitchens were closed at 
Tilaunia, and the waifs were removed from there, the 
old building was retained and continued as a Christian 
weavers' establishment, from which some very good 
cloth is being turned out. 

The Rev. R. A. Hume, of Ahmedabad, has taken a 
great interest in all kinds of industrial work, and has 
given employment to many during the famine, and to 
orphans and other waifs since. 

Miss Marks took a great interest in, and Dr. Ashe has 
given much time and attention to, industrial work, and 
the latter is endeavoring to teach the orphan children 
at Phalera thus to support themselves. He has pur- 
chased two power-looms and hopes to develop this in- 
dustry. He has in view the cultivation of land also, 
and thinks that in time his orphanage will become self- 
supporting. 

Thus have the famine workers been enabled to help 
the people in the time of their need, and many hundreds 
are alive to-day because of the various forms of relief 
which were started and carried on among them. 

The effect of all this charity and benevolence upon 
the life and feelings of the people has been very salutary, 
and their naive expressions of gratitude have often been 
most touching. It is occasionally said by some who 
meet with the masses of struggling humanity in India, 
that they find but little gratitude among the people. 

13 193 



IN FAMINE LAND 

It is, indeed, not surprising that such miserable poverty- 
should develop selfish and sordid instincts, and render 
the masses dull and irresponsive to unusual proffers of 
charity, but the great and prolonged sufferings through 
which they have passed have also shown their wonder- 
ful patience and endurance, and, in many instances 
have led to manifestations of gratitude as affecting in 
their nature as they are homely and rustic in expression. 
Often have I had villagers fall prostrate and embrace 
my feet, while expressing their gratitude in loud tones 
for being saved from starvation. Mothers have brought 
their little children to render thanks, and that the hand 
of the benefactor might be placed in blessing on their 
head. The common Oriental forms of address, " Father " 
and ' ' Mother, ' ' and ' ' Nourisher of the Poor, ' ' were uttered 
with more than the usual significance. Men saved in 
the time of direst need have returned to offer their ser- 
vices free. It was touching to see sometimes the efforts 
made to maintain self-respect. A chief in Rajputana, 
dwelling in his ruined house and surrounded with his 
starving people, accepted aid from charity for them, but 
persisted in saying, "I am a Rahtor, I cannot receive 
charity." Many parda nashins were reduced to the last 
extremity before they would accept the proffered aid. 
One man was given aid to get his family to the relief 
works, but returned it, because, he said, he had 
still a goat or two which he could live upon for a few 
days. I visited many villages in Rajputana after the 
famine, and have had the villagers crowd around, bring- 
ing the blankets and other clothing they had received, 
to show their gratitude, and how carefully they had 
kept them. Gratitude is noticeable in the increased 
friendliness and confidence of the ryots towards their 
benefactors, in little tokens brought by them and given 
with touching simplicity, in many words and expressions 

194 



IN FAMINE LAND 

used when talking among themselves but overheard by 
outsiders: " If the help had not come the thread of life 
would have been broken " ; " God has remembered us." 
The praise of the Indian com was in everybody's mouth. 
Its size and quality astonished them. " Now I have got 
through to the other side," said a poor cultivator, who 
had been given a few rupees to feed his bullocks during 
the stress. " We have heard of the generosity of Hatim 
Bai," said some, "but we have tasted that of the great 
Queen." "These are not rupees which have come over 
the sea," the poor people cried, in their joy, "but they 
are the water of life." 

Such has been the feeling created among the masses 
of the people relieved. And it is such feelings which 
make loyal subjects; for, truly, 

"When gratitude o'erflows the swelling heart, 
And breathes in free and uncorrupted praise 
For benefits receiv'd, propitious Heaven 
Takes such acknowledgment as fragrant incense. 
And doubles all its blessings." 



XX 

CONCLUSION 

" If any man is in any doubt as to whether he should sub- 
scribe, I would gladly give him a railway-ticket to a famine dis- 
trict, and take what he chose to give me on his return. He 
might go with a hard heart, but he would come back with a 
broken one." — Lord Curzon. 

It is now time to conclude this imperfect sketch of 
the great Indian famine. It has been impossible to re- 
duce to writing a perfectly vivid and accurate account of 
the actual events and effects of this sad calamity. There 
is an indescribable horror, an unspeakable misery about 
it all which eludes the skill of the most graphic writer 
and the talent of the ablest artist. Even photography 
leaves out the most pathetic, and yet the most common 
features — the groans of the suffering, the cry of the 
hungry, and the pathetic pleading of mothers for their 
children. Suffering and sorrow and the gna wings of 
hunger are just as real as the more tangible physical 
aspects and results of famine. This great visitation has 
gone, but it has left its lessons. It has shown how 
humanity is subject to misery and suffering ; how natural 
law in its normal movement is irrevocable and impla- 
cable ; how helpless man is in such emergencies ; how it is 
incumbent upon him to plan to meet and mitigate such 
awful visitations ; how he should seek to adjust himself 
to his physical environments ; how, by varying and multi- 
plying his industries, lessening his extravagances, and 

196 




ORPHAN BOYS BAPTIZED BY BISHOP WARNE AT NADIAD 



IN FAMINE LAND 

increasing his frugality and thrift, he can better his con- 
dition and increase his staying power ; how, by a multi- 
phed and extended system of tanks, lakes, canals, and 
railways he should seek to maintain food supply and 
transport it as required into needy places. 

The famine has also called out the benevolence and 
philanthropy of the world. It has shown one half of the 
world how the other half lives. The farmers of Kansas 
became interested in the farmers of India. The cry of 
hungry children aroused universal motherhood. One 
touch of nature has made the whole world kin. Turn 
now to the outlook : A people does not recover from such 
a calamity in a day. The famine did more than starve 
people. The people are dependent upon their draught 
cattle. In many places these all died. An agricultural 
people must have ploughs, and cattle and grain. Villages 
were deserted. Roofless houses show where man once 
lived. Families were scattered and broken up, indus- 
tries disorganized, and labor left stranded without cash, 
kind, or credit. 

Slowly the affected provinces will return to normal 
conditions. The keen -eyed Viceroy, Lord Curzon, at 
the close of the famine said to his Legislative Council : 

"That the famine-smitten tracts will at once speedily 
lose the marks of the ordeal through which they have 
passed may not be expected. The rapidity of recovery 
will depend upon many circumstances : upon the vitality 
and stout-heartedness of the tillers of the soil, upon the 
degrees of their indebtedness, upon the goodness or bad- 
ness of the next few seasons, upon the extent to which 
the cattle have perished, and, not least, upon the liber- 
ality in respect to revenue remission of the governments. 
As regards loss of stock, our latest reports are more en- 
couraging than at one time could have been foreseen, 

197 



IN FAMINE LAND 

and justify us in the belief that if the season be propi- 
tious the recuperation will be more rapid than might at 
first sight be deemed likely." 

The paramount duty now devolving upon those who 
made it possible to rescue starving waifs from death, 
and often from worse than death, is the support and 
training of the ten thousand famine - stricken, mostly 
children and widows, gathered into various orphanages 
and homes. These institutions will become in time, it 
is hoped, partly, if not altogether, self-supporting, but 
in the mean time these waifs, many of whom will develop 
into useful members of society, are dependent upon the 
charity of the disciples of Him who said, " Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these, My breth- 
ren, ye have done it unto Me." 

"One built a house — time laid it in the dust; 
He wrote a book, its title now forgot; 
He ruled a city, but his name is not 
On any tablet graven, or where rust 
Can gather from disuse, or marble bust. 
Another took a boy from wretched lot. 
Who on the state dishonor might have brought. 
And reared him to the Christian's hope and trust. 
The boy, to manhood grown, became a light 
To many souls, preached for human need 
The wondrous love of the Omnipotent. 
The work has multiplied, like stars at night 
When darkness deepens. Every noble deed 
Lasts longer than a granite monument." 



INDEX 



Aborigines, 21, 84. 
Abu Road, 132, 135. 
Additional dormitories, 155. 
After two months, 156. 

three months, 160. 

four months, 162. 
Aged by hunger, 145. 
Agents found, 119. 
Agriculture the chief industry, 

14- 
Ahmadnagar, 32, 81. 
Ahmedabad, t,^. 

poor-house, 44. 
Ajmir-Mairwara, 38, 62, 150. 
Ajmir, buildings, 155, 156. 

cholera in, 155. 

city of refuge, 153. 

description of, 99, 150. 

distributing centre, 153. 

grain-shops, 161. 

industrial work, 156. 

orphanages, 156, 157. 
Akbar, 150. 
Aligarh, 118, 191. 
Alliance Mission, the, 37. 
Alms-giving, 96. 
American donors, x. 
Americo- In di an Committee , 61, 

123, 125, 159. 
Amritsar, meeting at, 87. 
Anglo-Chinese College, 124. 
Annals of Rajisthan, 141. 
Apathy of Hindus, 89. 

in native states, 73. 
Arrival of corn, 159. 
Ashe, Dr. W. W., 118, 179. 

letters from, 179, 180, 181. 
Assistance acknowledged, x. 
At last, 86. 
Average rainfall, 8. 
Awful scenes in Gujarat, 80. 



Bailey, Thomas A., 125. 

Banas, 67. 

Banyan-tree, the, 105, 106. 

Baroda, 80, 106. 

Baulia, 88. 

Bengal, famines in, 3, 4. 

Bhagwana, 86. 

Bhartpur, 95. 

Bhils, account of, 36, 84. 

missions among, 87. 

primitive character of, 84. 

rude appearance of, 84. 

thieving habits of, 190. 

warlike nature of, 85. 
Biawar, 95, 119, 191. 
Bicycle tour, 99. 
Bika, 144. 
Bikanir, account of, 97, 141, 144. 

area of, 141. 

conquest of, 144. 

famine in, 145, 147. 

famine relief in, 147. 

population of, 143. 

present ruler of, 144. 

revenue of, 144. 
Bilaria, 88. 
Bissell, H. G., 32. 
Blair, G. W., 92. 
Blankets, distribution of, 127. 

manufacture of, 127, 130. 
Bombay Presidency, famine in, 

31- 

officer's letter, 40. 
Bones, 145. 
Breaking stone, 50. 
Brindaban, anxiety about, 158. 

mission in, 158. 

road, 78. 
Brocklesby's Meteorology, 11. 
Brown, J. Anderson, 119, 191. 
Brown, Miss, death of, 162. 



199 



INDEX 



Browne, Dr. and Mrs., 88. 
Buildings, 127. 
Btmdi, 73, 100. 
Bunya, the, 115, 116. 
BycuUa, 32. 

Camp at Godhra, 35. 
Canals, extent of, 25. 

the Ganges, 25. 

usefulness of, 23. 
Carey, Dr., 19. 
Cattle, destruction of, 116. 
Causes of famine, 10, 22. 
Census returns, 1901, 62. 
Central Provinces, famine in, 30. 

India Agency, famine in, 38. 
Central Relief Committee, 57. 
Chambal, the, 67. 
Chattaks, 49. 
Child, the cry of a, 96. 
Children, abandoned, 96, 12S, 168. 

rescued, 134, 153. 

sold, 34. 

starving, 127, 128, 154. 

suffering of, 127, 128,133, 178. 
Cholera, 31, 35, 85, 92, 103, 105, 
107, 117, 146, 155, 171. 

camp, no. III. 
Christian, the, 61. 
Christian Herald, the, 31, 38. 

famine relief, 59, 70. 
Church Missionary Society Bhil 

Mission, 87. 
Clancy, Rev. Dennis, 36, 154, 166, 

182. 
Classification of relief, 50. 
Code, the Provisional, 42, 46. 
Code relief, allowance, 47, 48. 

cattle, 46. 

circle, 44. 

classes, 46. 

gratuitous, 44. 

kitchens, 45. 

orphanages, 46. 

poor-houses, 45, 46. 

works, 44. 
Codes of local governments, 42. 

the famine, 42. 

unification of, 42. 
Cold snap, 34. 
College, the Mayo, 84. 
Committee, Americo-Indian, 61, 



123, 125, 159. 



Committee, famine relief, 119. 

international, 123. 

of one hundred, 160. 

of nine, 160. 

Rajputana, 67. 

Sialkote, 61. 
Committees, relief, 123. 
Conclusion, 196-198. 

of commission, 17. 
Condition of the people, 16, 17. 
Conference, Ecumenical Mission- 
ary, 160. 
Construction of villages, 114. 
Contents, v. 

Contrast with former famines, 32. 
Contributions, 124. 

from children, 124, 125. 
Convalescents, 58. 
Cooper,deathof Mr. andMrs., 106. 
Corn, arrival of, 159. 
Cost of faraine, 1896-97, 28; 1899- 

1900, 29. 
Council in Calcutta, 40. 
Curzon, Lord, 29, 51, 9-3, 146, 197. 

Dante's Inferno, 99. 
Darkest India, 15. 
Daropti Das, 190. 
Dead pit, the, 36. 
Death, place of, 115. 

the valley and shadow of , 1 14. 
Debt, its prevalence, 18, 19. 
Debt and the Right Use of Money, 

20, 21. 
Deccan, famine in the, 29. 
Decrease in the population, 62. 
Deep wells, 143. 
Desert, the Rajputana, 116. 
Destitution in India, 14, 15. 
Development of resources, 27. 
Devotion of workers, no, 154, 

155, 159, 172. 
Devouring fish, 35. 
Dinners to Christians, 98. 
to the poor, 120, 121. 
Disappointed wanderers, 79. 
Distribution of clothing, 130, 136. 

of grain, 136, 183. 
Divine Providence and famine, 

12. 
Dixon, Captain, 152. 
Dohad, 107. 
Donation from children, 124. 



200 



INDEX 



Donation, from China, 124. 

from Christian Herald fund, 
182. 

from committees, 59, 61. 

from friends, 124. 

of clothing, 136. 

of foods, 135. 

of medicines, 61. 
Dole system, 96. 
Dudo Punja, 90. 
Dunlop-Smith, Major, 147. 
Dutt, Romesh, C.I.E., 3, 9, 26. 
Duty, 198. 

Ecumenical Missionary Con- 
ference, 160. 

Emigration from native states, 65, 
77. 82. 

Endtirance of natives, 194. 

Epidemics accompanying famine, 
103. 

Equivalent, grain, 48. 

Everlasting wail, 95. 

Excessive land-tax, 27. 

Expenditure on famines, 54. 

Extent of famine, 1896-97, 28; 
1899—1900, 29. 

Extent of canals, 25. 
of railways, 25. 

Fairbank, Rev. E., 31, 37. 
Famine in Gujarat, 33. 
among the Bhils, 87. 
codes, 42. 
commission, 1898, 44, 49; 

1901, 54, 63. 
committee, central, 57. 

Interdenominational, 71. 

Rajputana, 119, 123. 
conditions, 69, 70. 
cost of, 65. 
diseases, 119. 
extent of, 28. 

facts and fallacies, 26, 58, 59. 
horrors of, 97, 98. 
in Bombay Presidency, 31. 

Central India, 38. 

native states, 65, 72. 

Punjab, 39. 

Rajputana, 69. 

the Central Provinces, 



3°- 
land, through, 97. 



Famine, lessons from, 196 

officers, 56. 

preparedness for, 52. 

relief, 54, 123. 

relief camp, Jaipur, 122. 

reports, 17, 28, 64. 

tables, 46, 47, 50, 58, 59. 
Famines and Land Assessments in 

India, 26. 
Famines, causes of, 10. 

during the past century, 8. 

great, in India, i. 

in Bengal, 3. 

Bombay, 7. 

Deccan, 2. 

Madras, i. 

Northwest Provinces, i. 

Punjab, I, 7. 

Rajputana, 4, 5, 6. 

Sind, 2. 

prevention of, 23. 

Victorian era, 8. 
Farmers, condition of, 81, 82. 
Fee, W. T., 61. 
Feebleness of the people, 97. 
Food required, 47. 

stuffs, 134, 137. 
Forms of relief, grain-shops, 186. 

industrial work, 192. 

kitchens, 187. 

need of, 185. 

orphanages, 191. 

rescue work, 190. 

results, 193. 

various, 44, 54, 185. 
Fox, D. O., 162. 
Frease, E. F., his plans, 187, 192. 

letters from, 159,161,162,182. 

sickness of, 163. 
Fruit bearing, 192. 
Fuller, Mrs. M. B., 37. 
•Funds, plea for, 100, 101. 
Future prospects, 196. 

Ganges Canal, 25. 
Gill, C. H., 85. 
Glossary, 206. 
Godhra, 34, 104, 105, 107. 
Government allowance, 46. 

resolution, 1893, 48. 
Grain bags, 114, 126, 153. 

equivalent, 43, 45, 48. 

for villagers, 160. 



301 



i 



INDEX 



Grain, ship-load of, 1/9. 

transported, 23. 

waiting for, 186. 
Grain-shops, Ajmir, 161. 

and kitchens, 187, 188. 

Bikanir, 147. 

Bir, 186. 

Merta Road, 186. 

Phalera, 186. 

Pisangun, 186. 

proceeds of, 126. 

Tilaunia, 170. 
Grant from Americo-Indian fund, 

159- 
Gratitude for help, 175, 193, 

194. 
Gratuitous relief, 54. 
Great famines in India, i. 

famine in 1631, i; 1770, 3. 
Group of orphans, 156, 160, 162. 
Guardian, the Bombay, 61, 90, 

92, 123. 
Guests, our, 96. 
Gujarat, cholera in, 106, 107. 
famine in, 33, 79, 80, 106. 
grain depots in, 186. 
usually exempt, 33, 41. 

Hall, Captain, 151. 
Hardships, 93. 
Harrison, J. C, 88. 
Hauser, Mrs. I. L., 139. 
Hearing petitions, 64. 
Help needed and secured, 168. 
Henderson, Rev. George, 98. 
Herald, the Christian, 123, 124, 

126, 134, 159. 
Herbert,' Rev. E. P., 88. 
Heroism, 103, 109, 154. 
Hides, 99. 

Higher castes affected, 34. 
Hissar, 39. 

Historic faculty wanting, i. 
Hoogly, corpses in the, 4. 
Horrors of famine, 95, 97, 100, 

loi, 103, 107, 108, 127, 145. 
Hudson, Rev. T. M., 80, 161, 

162. 
Hume, Rev. E. S., 32, 37, 71. 

R. A., 193. 
Hunger, aged by, 145. 
Hunter, Dr. W. W., 13, 16. 
Sir William, 14. 



Illustrations, vii., viii. 
Immigration, evils of, 82. 
Impotence of the people, 117. 
Incineration, 107. 
Indescribable conditions, 196. 
India, map of, facing p. i. 

poverty of, 14. 
India' and Malaysia, 15. 
Indian apathy, 72. 

Famine Commission, 23. 

famines (see Famines), 1-9. 
Industrial work, 127, 192, 193. 
Inglis, J., loi. 
Inn rented, 156. 

Interdenominational Famine Com- 
mittee, 71. 
Irrigation, its extent, 27. 

Jahangir, 150. 
Jai Chand, i. 
Jaipur, 95, 121. 

maharajah, liberality of, 
122. 

relief works, 122. 
Jalandhar City, 80. 
Jats,i44. . 
Jhalod, 90. 
Jodh Rao, 144. 
Jodha, Maharajah, 116. 
Jodhpur, 95, 115. 
Journal, the India Sunday-School, 

123. 
Jungle Tribe's Mission, 108. 

Kanbai, 86. 
Karmarkher, S. V., 81. 
Kathiawar, 7,t,. 
Khandesh, 84. 
Khandwa, no. 
Kherwara, 85. 
Kishangarh, 95. 
Kitchens, Banas, 132. 

Bikanir, 147. 

Disa, 132. 

Erinpura Road, 132. 

Mehsana, 132. 

Naraina, 126, 188. 

Phalera, 126, 188. 

Raho, 132. 

Rani, 132. 

Sujat Road, 132. 

Tilaunia, 126, 166, 167, 



202 



INDEX 



Klopsch, Dr. Louis, 37, 59, 80, 

106. 
Kuchawan, 95. 

Land-tax excessive, 27. 
Lawson, Mrs., 191. 
Lessons from the famine, 196. 
Letters to an Indian Rajah, 

Liberal relief, 51. 

Little children, suffering of, 

178. _ 

Locusts a cause of famine, 7. 
Loni, the, 67. 
Lord Comwallis, 4. 

Curzon (see Curzon, Lord). 

Landsdowne, 69. 

Macaulay, Lord, 3. 

Madras Presidency, famine in, i, 

7- 
Mahrattas, 150. 
Mairwara, history of, 150. 
lawlessness of, 151. 
prosperity of, 152. 
Map of India, facing p. i. 
Mark Twain, i. 

Marks, Miss Lilian, 38, 10 1, 127, 
129, 156, 169, 170, 171, 172, 

173- 174- 
Marriages, expensiveness of, 21. 
Marwar, 114, 116. 

Junction, 115, 118, 133. 
Marwari, his condition, 117. 
Material losses, 63. 
Mayo College, the, 84. 
McNeill, J. H., 108. 
McWhinney, Dr. R. B., 90. 
Meaning of Indian words, 206. 
Megasthenes, 25. 
Merta Road, 95, 180. 
Meteorology, 11. 
Mills's History of India, 2. 
Minimum ration and wage, 43. 
Mission, Irish Presbyterian, 88, 

90. 
Money-lenders, the, 19. 

and the government, 20. 

extortioners, 19. 
Moneyless, 113. 
Monsoon, operation of, 10. 

failure of, the cause of 
famine, 10, 12. 



More Tra-ihps Abroad, i. 
Morgan and Scott, 137. 
Mortality, among the Bhils, 36. 
cattle, 64, 81. 
extent of, 63, 64, 65. 
frontispiece. 
in native states, 62. 

Central Provinces, 62. 
Gujarat, 63. 
prevention of, impossible, 

56. 
through epidemics resulting 

from famine, 62, 63. 
Mulligan, Rev. W., 37, 90, 92. 
Mussood, I., I. 
Muttra, 117. 

Nadiad, 162. 

Nagaur, 98. 

Naraina, 120, 188. 

Nash, Vangham, 30, 146. 

Nasirabad, 100. 

Native princes, policy of, 146. 

Native states, emigration from, 

77- 

famine in, 71, 74, 145. 

government of, 69. 

independence of, 69. 

number of, 71. 

obstacles in, 71. 

relief in, 74. 
Need of help, 161. 
Newton, Rev. C. B., 80. 
Nightingale, Dr., 36. 
Northwest Provinces, famine in, 

I. 7- 
Nursing mothers, 50. 
Nyanagar, 152. 

Obstacles to reform, 71. 

Official Report of Commissioners, 
28. 

On the way, 78. 

Orphan boys, Nadiad, 162. 

Orphanages, 126, 207. 

Orphans, 126, 160, 164, 191. 

Osborne, Rev. Dennis, 135. 

Our guests, 96. 

Outram, Rev. Arthur, 86. 

Over-assessment a cause of fam- 
ine, 27. 

Overlapping, 140, 160. 

Overwhelmed, 174. 



203 



INDEX 



Pali, 117. 

Panch Mahals, famine in, 35, 90. 

Panic at Godhra, 35. 

Parantij, 88. 

Park, J. W., 162. 

Willie, death of, 162. 
Patients, sorting the, 108. 
People chiefly agricultural, 14. 
Pestilence, 2. 

Petitions of the poor, 64. 
Phalera buildings, 176, 183. 

blankets, 120. 

difficulties, 170, 179. 

grain-shop, 1S2 

heavy work, 180, 183. 

industrial work, 183. 

kitchen, 177, 186. 

orphanages, 179, 184. 

training-school, 177. 

work opened, 176. 
Philanthropy called out, 197. 
Photographs, xi. 
Piece-work forbidden, 43. 
Piles of bags, 114. 
Pit, the dead, 36, 105. 
Place of death, 115. 
Plague, the bubonic, 41. 
Plans at Ajmir, 120. 
Plea for funds, 100, loi. 
Plomer, C. H., no. 
Poor-house, the, 35, 104, 120. 
Poverty of the people, 14, 16. 
Preface, ix. 

Preparedness for famine, 54. 
Present duty, 198. 
Prevention of famine, 23. 
Prices and wages, 18. 
Private relief, 59. 
Proverbs, 10. 
Provisional Code, 46. 
Punjab, famine in, i, 7, 39. 
Punjabis, 88. 

Quality of corn praised, 195. 
Quantity of food given, 186. 
Quarters for the people, 127. 
Quiet eating, 121. 
Quito, S. S., 59, 61, 126, 159. 

arrival of, 159. 
Quitting home, 78. 

Raho kitchen report, 132. 
Railways, extent of, 25. 



Railways, usefulness in time of 

famine, 23, 117. 
Railway-stations, 97, 165. 
Rainfall in India, 8. 
Rajputana, cause of severity of 
famine, 69, 70. 

description of, 67, 68. 

famine relief, 54, 123. 

famines in, 4-7, 36, 38, 69. 

forms of relief, 185. 

lack of enterprise in. 70. 

late famine in, 69, 70. 

relief committee in, 119. 

starving villagers of, 66. 

tour in, 95-ro2. 
Rajputs, 97. 

Ramabai, Pandita, 135, 137. 
Rations, 47. 
Ravages of famine, 9. 
Receiving and giving, 123. 
Rees, J. D., 26. 
Reinforcements, 88. 
Relief, Christian Herald, 61. 

camps, 117, 118. ■ 

classification of, 42. 

measures, 42, 43, 44. 

numbers receiving, 56. 

reports, 58, 59. 
Report of Commission, 1898, 8, 28; 
1901, 64. 

Viceroy, 1900, 29. 
Rescue work, 135, 153, 170, 190. 
Rescued children, 119, 134, 153. 
Returns, censtis, 62. 
Rhodes, Rev. E., 88. 
Robinson, Rev. J. E., 104. 

Rev. J. W., 161. 
Robson, Dr. R. G., 119. 
Room in the inn, 156. 
Rustam, 96. 
Ryot, his improvidence, 21. 

Sacrifice, 94. 
Sad sights, 177. 
Saharmati, the, 67. 
Sali, 120. 

Sambhar Lake, 97. 
Sand and salt, 97. 
Scott, Dr. Emma, no. 

letters from, 156, 157, 167. 

sickness of, 173. 
Scott, Robert, 9. 
Sea of sand, 97. 



204 



INDEX 



Season reports, 43. 

Serai, the, 157. 

Shadow of death, 114. 

Shops, grain, 147, 161, 170, 186 

an aid to kitchens, 187. 
Shylock of India, 20. 
Sialkote Mission fund, 61. 
Sind, farmers in, 2. 
Singh, Sir Pertab, 117. 
Skeletons, 118. 
Smith, S. O., 118, 131. 

letters from, 133, 138, 140. 
Sorting the patients, 108. 
South Rampur, 90. 

Africa, letters from, 125. 
SpontaneDus vegetables, 142. 
Sri Ganga Singh, Maharajah, 144, 

146, 147. 
Staff that stuck, the, no. 
Starved, 104. 
Starving villagers, 68. 
Stevenson, T. S., 88. 
Stone-breaking, 50. 
Suffering children, 178. 
Sujat Road clothing, 136, 139. 

grain, 132, 135. 

kitchens, 132, 135. 

rescue work, 131, 134, 138. 

repDrts from, 132, 133. 

work, how opened, 131. 

work stopped, 133. 
Summary of causes of famine, 
22, 39. 

extent and severity of fam- 
ine, 40. 
Sun-spots and famine, 13. 

Table, census, 62. 

famine, 7. 

rations, 46, 47, 50. 
Taragarh, 150. 
Taubuland, 125. 
Taylor, Dr. and Mrs., 90. 
Thanksgiving service, in. 
The horrors of famine, 97, 98. 
Theory of sun-spots, 13. 
Thoburn, Bishop J. M., 15, 60. 
Thompson, Rev. C. S., 37, 85. 

death of, 37, 85, 86. 

work of, 37, 85. 
Tilaunia cotton-press, 165. 

description of, 165. 

grain-shop, 169. 



Tilaunia kitchen, 165, 166. 

rescue camp, 167. 

sickness, 174. 

weavers, 192. 
Times, the, 9. 
Todd, James, Lieutenant-Colonel, 

114, 141. 
Too late, 91. 
Tour Round India, 25. 
Training-school, Bikanir, 148. 

Phalera, 177. 
Trekking, 77. 
Trying times, 163. 
Tryon, Miss, in. 
Tucker, Commissioner, 15, 20. 

Unconcern of Rajahs, 73. 
Undersold bunyas, 186. 
Unification of codes, 42. 
Unpreparedness for famine, 27. 
Unutterable sufferings, 97, loi, 

104, 107. 
Unwholesome food, 137, 177. 
Useful foods, 135. 
Usefulness of railways, 23, 117. 
canals, 23. 

Valentine, Rev. Colin S., 61. 
Valley and shadow of death, 

114. 
Vegetables, spontaneous, 142. 
Via dolorosa, 117. 
Viceroy's statement, 51. 

famine report, 29, 93. 
Villagers, emigration of, 78. 

grain for the, 159. 

starving, 68. 
Villages abandoned, 78, 81, 

construction of, 114. 
Vincent, H. A., 147. 
Volunteers, 168. 

Wadala, 31, 37. 

Wage, how expressed, 52. 

scale, 50. 
Waifs from the famine, x. 
Wail of woe, 95. 
Waiting for food, 12. 
Wanderers in Gujarat, 79. 
Ward, Rev. Robert C, 104, 106. 

sickness of, 162, 163. 
War and famine, 2. 

in Africa, 41. 



205 



INDEX 



Warren Hastings, 4. 
Water famine, 29, 31, 32. 
Way, on the, 78. 
Weavers, 148, 170, 192. 
Wells, deep, 143. 
Westcott, Rev. Foss, 88. 
Whitehouse, Dr. J., death of, 

163. 
Widows' home, 126, 191. 
Witness, the Indian, 61, 104, 123, 

187 
Women, suffering of, 32, 177. 
Words, Indian, 206. 



Workers, sufferings of, 163, 164. 
devotion of, no, 154, 155, 
159. 172. 
Wrecks of humanity, 97, 98. 

Years of famine, 1-9. 
Young forsaken, 96, 127, 128. 

saving the, 134, 153. 
Youthfulness gone, 145. 

Zealous workers, 93, 94, 190. 
Zenana women, 32, 34. 
Zone, famine, 29, 39. 



GLOSSARY 



Anna, 1-16 of a rupee. 
BuNYA, money - lender and 

^rain merchant. 
Chattak, 1-16 of a seer. 
Crore, ten millions. 
Kharif, the autumnal harvest. 
Lakh, hundred thousand. 
Pice, 1-4 of an anna. 



Pie, 1-12 of an anna. 
PuRDA, curtain. 
PuRDA-NisHiN, Purda woman. 
Rabi, the spring harvest. 
Rupee, ^^ cents. 
Ryot, tenant. 

Sari, Hindu woman's dress. 
Seer, two pounds. 



THB END 



